Asian Tech Press (Sep 30) -- China-based Clover Biopharmaceuticals Ltd. announced Sept. 22 that its COVID-19 vaccine candidate showed 79% efficacy against against Delta variant.

The company said its adjuvanted protein-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, SCB-2019 (CpG 1018/Alum), achieved the primary and secondary efficacy endpoints in SPECTRA, a global pivotal Phase 2/3 clinical trial.

SPECTRA was a double-blind controlled trial that enrolled more than 30,000 subjects and was conducted in five countries, including the Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa and Belgium.

Vaccine efficacy was successfully demonstrated with 100% of SARS-CoV-2 strains observed as variants. It was 79% effective against the Delta variant, with 92% and 59% efficacy against the Gamma and Mu variants, respectively.

The candidate is based on Clover's SCB-2019 antigen in combination with CpG 1018TM adjuvant, provided by the U.S. biopharmaceutical firm Dynavax Technologies Corp (DVAX:NASDAQ CM), and aluminum hydroxide (alum).

Clover plans to plans to file for conditional marketing approval with all global regulatory agencies in the fourth quarter of 2021. Once approved, it expects to market the first batch of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate SCB-2019 (CpG 1018/Alum) by the end of 2021.

Once approved for the WHO Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EUL), Clover will deliver up to 414 million doses of the vaccine globally through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), a WHO-backed global vaccine-sharing platform.

SCB-2019 (CpG 1018/Alum) is also expected to be one of the first recombinant protein COVID-19 vaccine candidates to be commercially available globally through the COVAX.

China-based Clover is a clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to the development of novel vaccine and biotherapeutic candidates, and its proprietary Trimer-Tag™ technology platform serves for the development of novel vaccine and biotherapeutic products.