Confirmed COVID-19 cases are in the millions, and with hundreds of thousands of deaths from the disease the social, healthcare and economic consequences are likely to persist for years. While drug treatments may emerge, which reduce the impact of the disease, vaccination represents the most appropriate means to bring the virus under control in developed and developing countries equally. Multiple technologies are being deployed to identify a safe and effective vaccine.
In the case of COVID-19 most vaccines in early development are targeting the so-called spike protein. This protein is expressed on the surface of the virus and allows the virus to bind to the ACE2 receptor on the cell surface, initiating fusion with and uptake by the cell, followed by the chain of events leading to virus replication.
N4 Pharma are a specialist pharmaceutical company developing a novel silica nanoparticle delivery system for vaccines and therapeutics for licensing to pharmaceutical and biotech partners. This nanoparticle has the potential to help commercialise cancer immunotherapy drugs and improve the effectiveness of viral vaccines.
