Duke-NUS Medical School and clinical-stage messenger RNA medicines company Arcturus Therapeutics will be embarking on the first human trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Singapore.
They will be initiating human dosing of LUNAR-COV19 as soon as possible.
In a press statement, Duke-NUS Medical School said its Clinical Trial Application for the COVID-19 vaccine candidate LUNAR-COV19 has been approved to proceed by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA).
"The healthy volunteer study will evaluate several dose levels of LUNAR-COV19 in up to 108 adults, including older adults."
Professor Ooi Eng Eong, Deputy Director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS, said, “Preclinical studies on LUNAR-COV19 have shown very promising findings, including the possibility that a single dose of this vaccine may be sufficient to trigger robust and durable immune responses against SARS-CoV-2."
He added, "We are very eager to start the first-in-human clinical trial here in Singapore and advance LUNAR-COV19 on its journey to becoming a potential commercial vaccine.”
LUNAR-COV19 was developed using Arcturus’ STARR technology and a unique platform developed at Duke-NUS allowing rapid screening of vaccines for potential effectiveness and safety.