Taipei-based Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp. (MVC) will soon begin working with National Taiwan University Hospital on rolling out human trials for a COVID-19 vaccine. That was the word from the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday.
MVC’s vaccine had first been cleared for human trials at the end of August, with health authorities giving conditional approval. The condition for approval is that Medigen submits additional technical data on the vaccine.
This will be the third domestically-developed vaccine to enter human trials, after two vaccines developed by Adimmune Corp and United Biomedical. MVC hasn’t confirmed when the trials will begin, but the FDA says that it expects to test the vaccine on 45 people.
MVC’s vaccine is also the first COVID-19 vaccine to be jointly developed by Taiwan and the US. The US National Institutes of Health is working with MVC and US-based Moderna to develop two types of vaccine.