South Korea approves Phase III trial of SK Bioscience’s Covid-19 vaccine

• South Korea on Tuesday approved vaccine developer SK Bioscience’s Phase III study of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate.
• GBP510 is the first clinical trial of a vaccine candidate in China. It will weigh the immunogenicity and safety of the vaccine against AstraZeneca.
• 3,000 of the 3,990 adults in the trial will be vaccinated with the experimental vaccine, and 990 will be vaccinated with AstraZeneca at an interval of 4 weeks.

South Korea on Tuesday approved vaccine developer SK Bioscience to conduct a phase III study of its Covid-19 candidate vaccine. There was a shortage of vaccines and the surge in infections was driving demand.

Drug Safety Minister Kim Gang-lip said at a press conference that the clinical trial of GBP510 is the first domestic vaccine candidate and will weigh its immunogenicity and safety compared with AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine.

Kim said that of the 3,990 adults in the trial, 3,000 will be vaccinated with the experimental vaccine and 990 will be vaccinated with AstraZeneca at an interval of 4 weeks.

SK Bioscience said in a statement that early test data from 80 healthy adults who received two doses of the protein-based vaccine showed that they all induced neutralizing antibodies against the virus.

The company’s share price debuted in March and rose 29.5% on Tuesday, setting a record high, outperforming the benchmark index’s 0.6% decline.

SK is also a contract manufacturer of vaccines from AstraZeneca and Novavax Inc.

South Korea has a total of 213,987 infections and 2,134 deaths, and 15.4% of its 52 million population has been vaccinated, mainly using vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna.

But on Monday, the government stated that Moderna will deliver less than half of its planned shipments this month due to production problems.

The government earlier stated that seven local drugmakers will start the final phase of clinical trials in the second half of this year.

The Ministry of Drug Safety stated that SK is the second company in the world to try a comparative test with another vaccine following the French biotech company Valneva’s Phase III trial of AstraZeneca injections.

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