New funding for vaccine to protect against deadly MERS coronavirus

•   $2.6m investment from CEPI to advance Uvax Bio’s MERS vaccine candidate into preclinical trials.
•    Nanoparticle design mimics size and shape of MERS virus to trigger enhanced immune response.
•    As one of the deadliest coronaviruses, MERS is prioritised for vaccine research by CEPI.
•    CEPI has also funded the development of COVID-19 vaccines and is supporting new broadly protective coronavirus vaccines and a coronavirus vaccine library.

OSLO/ NEWARK, DE, 24 MARCH 2025—Efforts to advance the first-ever vaccine against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome are progressing, with a new CEPI investment moving a promising vaccine candidate into preclinical trials.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a viral illness caused by MERS coronavirus, from the same viral family as COVID-19. Outbreaks can start when the virus spreads from camels to humans. MERS has a higher fatality rate than COVID-19, with up to a third of infections resulting in death. Over 2600 cases have been reported since its discovery in 2012, according to a disease report from the World Health Organization (WHO) published this month.

With up to $2.6 million funding from CEPI, the new MERS vaccine is being developed by Uvax Bio, an early-stage vaccine technology company which is a spin-out of The Scripps Research Institute in the US. The investment forms part of CEPI’s wider coronavirus vaccine portfolio.

“We’ve already seen three major outbreaks caused by coronaviruses in the 21st century, including both the persistent threat of MERS across the Middle East, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic” explains Dr Kent Kester, Executive Director of Vaccine R&D, CEPI. “Investing in vaccines to protect against these vicious threats is therefore crucial. Uvax Bio’s unique vaccine could help strengthen our response to future MERS outbreaks, while also informing the development of vaccines being developed against other coronaviruses.”

The vaccine is being built using Uvax Bio’s proprietary protein nanoparticle technology, 1c-SApNP®, licensed from Scripps Research. The technology is already being tested against other infectious diseases, including HIV where an in-human trial is ongoing.

Uvax’s novel vaccine design uses tiny protein “nanoparticles” to closely resemble, or mimic, the size and shape of the MERS coronavirus. Uvax Bio has analysed viral structures and designed the technology to present enhanced antigens —parts of the virus that trigger an immune response—in a multilayered scaffold layout. This design offers stability and allows for as many as twenty antigens to be presented at one time which could help provide strong protection by generating both antibody and T cell immunity.

The 1c-SApNP® technology is also unique as it has been combined with a process called ‘glycan trimming’. Here, sugar molecules—called glycans—that would normally cover the MERS virus are shortened in the nanoparticle virus-mimicking vaccine design. This could expose additional sites on the antigen surface, enhancing the immune response.

“Uvax Bio is excited to advance our MERS nanoparticle vaccine candidate with CEPI’s support” states Jiang Zhu, Ph.D., Co-founder and Interim Chief Scientific Officer of Uvax Bio, and an Associate Professor at Scripps Research, “our 1c-SApNP platform has the potential to impact this disease significantly.”

Alongside its innovative vaccine design, Uvax Bio’s technology is advantageous as the platform uses a simple and robust manufacturing process to express the nanoparticles in just one-step. It is also expected to not require complex frozen storage—which can otherwise be a barrier to vaccine access—for up to one-year.

CEPI’s funding will also support research to assess manufacturing the vaccine through an alternative production method, known as the C1 fungal expression system. If successful, this could increase the speed of vaccine production and lower manufacturing costs to improve access to vaccine doses in the future.

The Uvax Bio project is the latest to be announced as part of CEPI’s call for vaccine innovations which could help the world better prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.

Both CEPI and Uvax Bio are committed to enabling equitable access to the outputs of their partnership, in line with CEPI’s Equitable Access Policy. Project results will be published open access for the benefit of the global scientific community.

CEPI’s MERS programme seeks to advance candidate vaccines through Phase 2 trials and develop an investigational ready reserve  that could be used to control future regional outbreaks.

CEPI has made significant investments to advance vaccines against other coronaviruses. This  includes supporting the development of multiple vaccines against COVID-19 now approved for domestic and global use. CEPI is also the leading funder of broadly protective coronavirus vaccines and is developing a coronavirus vaccine library.

ENDS

About MERS
MERS is a severe respiratory infection caused by MERS-CoV, a coronavirus that was first identified in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. It belongs to the same family of viruses that cause the common cold, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and COVID-19. It has caused more than 2,600 human infections in at least 27 countries since it first emerged, and it has a case-fatality rate of more than 35 percent. There are as yet no licensed vaccines or treatments for MERS. The WHO has identified MERS as a priority disease with epidemic potential in urgent need of R&D. MERS was one of the first viruses designated a priority pathogen by CEPI when the coalition launched in 2017.

About CEPI 
CEPI was launched in 2017 as an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic and civil organisations. Its mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic disease threats and enable equitable access to them. CEPI has supported the development of more than 50 vaccine candidates or platform technologies against multiple known high-risk pathogens and is also advancing the development of rapid response platforms for vaccines against a future Disease X. Central to CEPI’s pandemic-beating five-year plan for 2022-2026 is the ‘100 Days Mission’ to compress the time taken to develop safe, effective, globally accessible vaccines against new threats to just 100 days.

About Uvax
Uvax Bio, LLC, a spin-off vaccine company from Scripps Research, employs proprietary 1c-SApNP® platform technology invented by Scripps researchers to develop and commercialize vaccines for challenging infectious diseases. The 1c-SApNP® platform utilizes the latest advances in computational and structural biology to design and produce  virus-like particles (VLPs) that closely resemble the target virus in its infectious form. These intricately designed protein VLPs activate and prolong interaction with the immune system, which is expected to generate more potent and durable immune responses compared to protein subunit vaccines.

Uvax Bio holds exclusive worldwide rights to the 1c-SApNP® platform and an expanding portfolio of 12 patented vaccine candidates in development at stages ranging from optimization to clinical development. In addition to the leading clinical candidates for HIV-1, Uvax Bio is working to advance its vaccine candidates for pandemic influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus (hMPV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV). Uvax Bio vaccines are produced using a single-step, universal, cell-based manufacturing process. For more information, visit www.uvaxbio.com.