Codagenix and Univercells Announce Research Collaboration on Undisclosed, High-Priority Human Vaccine Target with Global Public Health Demand:

Partnership will leverage companies’ core technologies in vaccine development and viral vaccine manufacturing

Codagenix Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing prophylactic vaccines and oncolytic virus therapies, and Univercells S.A., a global life sciences company using bioprocessing expertise and nextgeneration technologies to open access to bioproduction, today announced a research collaboration agreement on an undisclosed, high-priority human vaccine target with global public health demand. The partnership will leverage Codagenix’s Synthetic Attenuated Virus Engineering (SAVE) platform for safe, synthetic, live-attenuated virus vaccine development and

Univercells’ viral vaccine process development and manufacturing capacity operated by Exothera, its Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO).

Codagenix is developing a live-attenuated vaccine against an undisclosed, high-priority target, for which it has successfully developed codon-pair deoptimized, attenuated virus cultured in Vero cells. Under the terms of the research collaboration agreement, Univercells will assess the Codagenix vaccine candidate in Univercells Technologies’ (a Univercells company) scale-X™ bioreactor system, with commercial production feasibility foreseen on the NevoLine™ Upstream manufacturing platform. The scale-X™ single-use bioreactor is designed to deliver intensified production of viral products by relying on a novel structured fixed-bed design. The NevoLine™ platform, the latest equipment of Univercells Technologies, is designed to enable the scalable production of viral vectors resulting in high production throughput and lower long-term operational costs.

“Univercells’ viral vaccine manufacturing capabilities are the perfect fit for Codagenix as we expand our portfolio of vaccines developed using our SAVE platform, which utilizes a computer algorithm to recode the genomes of viruses and construct live-attenuated vaccines. This proprietary system enables Codagenix to transform a dangerous viral pathogen into a safe vaccine or solid-tumor therapeutic,” said J. Robert Coleman, Ph.D., CEO of Codagenix. “Like COVIVAC™, our single-dose, intranasal, live-attenuated vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, we believe the vaccine candidate now partnered with Univercells is well-positioned to address the shortcomings of existing interventions against a deadly global health challenge and — if successful — ensure large-scale availability at an affordable price.”

Hugues Bultot, CEO of Univercells, added: “Codagenix has identified what could be a highly potent vaccine against a high-priority disease target with persistent global public health demand. We believe this vaccine is ideally suited for production via Univercells’ proprietary manufacturing system and welcome the opportunity to work with Codagenix to advance its development.”