By Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporterAdimmune Corp (國光生技) on Thursday said it is developing a COVID-19 vaccine in cooperation with the National Health Research Institutes, and plans to run animal tests in the second quarter if its research proceeds smoothly. As the virus’ sequence reportedly evolves and appears different in separate regions, the company is attempting to determine whether the difference is considerable enough to affect the efficacy of a vaccine, Pan said. Earlier this month National Taiwan University managed to isolate the virus strain of COVID-19, and Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗) on Monday said that it expects to conduct clinical tests for its vaccine in the second half of this year. However, Adimmune said that those antibodies would not help in the development of vaccines. However, our goal is to produce an antigen against the virus, which is different,” Pan said.

Source: Taipei Times February 21, 2020 15:56 UTC