South Australia’s Novel Response to Coronavirus

This week, we speak to vaccine development expert Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from South Australia. He is the Director of Endocrinology at Flinders Medical Centre, a Professor in the School of Medicine at Flinders University and the founder of Vaxine Pty Ltd, an Adelaide-based biotechnology company specialising in pandemic vaccine design. Professor Petrovsky joins the MTPConnect podcast to update us on his promising vaccine candidate - COVAX-19, with a recombinant spike protein approach, that has recently successfully completed Phase 1 trials at Royal Adelaide Hospital. It’s a thought provoking discussion covering vaccine development, funding, access issues and manufacturing capabilities, future pandemic preparedness and what we can learn from past outbreaks to protect us against other threats like MERS-CoV. He also reveals how the vaccine mapping project funded by MTPConnect as a part of the Industry Growth Centre Project Fund Program helped accelerate their current COVAX-19 research program. Listen for a fascinating chat.