Startup aims to develop universal vaccine against multiple coronavirus strains
A vaccine engineering company spun out of Cornell research is seeking to rapidly translate a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine using outer membrane vesicle (OMV) technology. The company, Versatope Therapeutics, was co-founded by Matt DeLisa, the William L. Lewis Professor of Engineering in the Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, his longtime collaborator, David Putnam, a professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell, and Christopher Locher, Versatope CEO and former Senior Director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Versatope has been working to develop a universal flu vaccine and was awarded a $17.9 million contract last fall from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In light of the coronavirus pandemic, Versatope has recently expanded its efforts to focus on the design of new vaccine candidates for COVID-19.
Versatope's efforts were recently highlighted on Boston 25 news:
And to read more about Versatope's COVID-19 vaccine efforts, go here: