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The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported on February 20 that the novel coronavirus illness known as COVID-19 has now infected nearly 75,000 people and that the number of fatalities in China has doubled since February 11, from 1,016 to 2,118. Amid uncertainty about the course of the outbreak, researchers in academia and industry are using a variety of approaches in their urgency to develop a vaccine that will work to contain the virus.
When COVID-19 came on the scene, David Weiner, the director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, and his group were already part of a project led by pharmaceutical company Inovio to develop a DNA-based vaccine for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which is caused by a coronavirus. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), whose mission is to accelerate development of vaccines in epidemic ...
