HOUSTON (1080 KRLD) - A Houston-based genetic engineering company says they have developed a candidate for a vaccine against the fast spreading virus.
John Price, president and CEO of Greffex says they use a genetic adenovirus based platform. It does not involve a live or killed virus. He says they can make any vaccine quickly.
Price says his company created a Middle East Respiratory Syndrome vaccine in 2015. "MERS is essentially the second cousin to the COVID-19 that we have now. We just took the knowledge that we had and created a vaccine from that."
He says what happens next is up to the government.
Funding would have to be secured to conduct small animal testing and then they would have to file a request with the FDA to conduct human trials. "The next question is always when. The answer from the National Institutes of Health is always 18 months. We believe probably less than that. It's hard to say it's going to be nine months or six months or 12 months, because that's really out of our hand."
He says based on their platform, it doesn't have to take a year and a half.