“We are very honored to receive this BARDA award, which will support the innovative approach of our oral pill vaccine platform,” said Dr. Michael Finney, Vaxart’s Interim Chief Executive Officer. “We believe our oral pill vaccine platform may ultimately hold the promise of revolutionizing how we fight pandemics and how we vaccinate against several infectious diseases. Our team is very excited about this contract, which allows us to prepare to move forward with our oral COVID vaccine program, together with BARDA.”

“We believe we have the chance to improve on existing vaccines in two important ways,” said Dr. James F. Cummings, Vaxart’s Chief Medical Officer. “First, a thermostable pill vaccine such as Vaxart’s offers the chance to overcome needle-phobia, a documented obstacle to vaccination, and offers the potential to make it easier to vaccinate more people faster than with traditional injected vaccines. Second, our previous research on other vaccine constructs found Vaxart’s oral pill vaccine to be cross-reactive against all tested SARS-CoV-2 variants and to trigger long-lasting immune responses, potentially offering broader, longer protection than the current first-generation vaccines. We believe our vaccine does this by triggering both a systemic and mucosal response.”

Project NextGen is a $5 billion initiative by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop new, innovative vaccines and therapeutics that provide broader and more durable protection against COVID-19 than the first generation COVID vaccines and medicines. Vaxart’s oral pill vaccine platform provides many of the features desired by BARDA, such as generating mucosal immunity and providing a cross-reactive response to many COVID variants.