Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines global business unit of Sanofi, and Translate Bio, a clinical-stage messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics company, today announced the preclinical results for MRT5500, an mRNA-based vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease.

Preclinical evaluation of MRT5500, importantly, demonstrated a favorable immune response profile against SARS-CoV-2. These data support the selection of MRT5500 for clinical development. A Phase 1/2 clinical trial is anticipated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2020. MRT5500 is being developed under a collaboration agreement between Sanofi Pasteur and Translate Bio.

“To tackle this global pandemic, we must look to both the strong knowledge we have from years of infectious disease expertise and the promise of new, innovative technologies,” said Thomas Triomphe, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Sanofi Pasteur. “Today’s presentation of these positive results is another development milestone for providing a safe and effective potential vaccine against SARS-CoV2 and shows how promising this technology is. We are looking forward to working on next steps with our partner Translate Bio to bring this technology to people worldwide.”

“The rapid development of effective vaccines to address the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be an urgent global public health need and I am encouraged by the progress we’ve made to date with our partner Sanofi Pasteur toward the development of a promising mRNA vaccine candidate,” said Ronald Renaud, Chief Executive Officer at Translate Bio. “The preclinical results we report in this paper demonstrate the ability of MRT5500 to elicit a favorable immune response in both mice and non-human primates. Importantly, these results provide additional support for using our mRNA platform to potentially expedite the development of alternative approaches to traditional vaccines.”