Bharat Biotech's iNCOVACC is India's first nasal Covid booster dose

Hyderabad: City-based Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) on Tuesday announced that its intranasal Covid-19 vaccine, iNCOVACC (BBV154), will be introduced in India as a booster dose. iNCOVACC is now available on CoWin and is priced at Rs. 800 in private markets and Rs. 325 for supplies to Central and state governments.

The vaccine has received approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) for use as heterologous booster dose.

iNCOVACC is a recombinant replication-deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion-stabilized SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The vaccine was evaluated in phases I, II, and III clinical trials with successful results. iNCOVACC allows intranasal delivery through nasal drops. The nasal delivery system has been designed and developed to be cost-effective in low- and middle-income countries.

iNCOVACC is stable at 2-8°C for easy storage and distribution.

Dr. Krishna Ella, the executive chairman of BBIL, said, "We have achieved the goals we set for ourselves during the pandemic. We have developed Covaxin and iNCOVACC, two Covid-19 vaccines from two different platforms with two different delivery systems. The vector intranasal delivery platform gives us the capability for rapid product development, scale-up, and easy and painless immunisation during public health emergencies and pandemics."

More options for booster dose

As a needle-less vaccine, Bharat Biotech's iNCOVACC will be India's first such booster dose. India will now have more options when it comes to third doses or precautionary doses.

Clinical trials were conducted to evaluate iNCOVACC as a primary dose schedule and as a heterologous booster dose for those who had previously received two doses of the two commonly administered Covid-19 vaccines in India.

India-US partnership in developing the vaccine

iNCOVACC was developed in partnership with Washington University, St. Louis, which designed and developed the recombinant adenoviral vector construct and evaluated in preclinical studies for efficacy.

Product development of safety evaluation, large-scale manufacturing scale-up, formulation and delivery device development, including human clinical trials, were conducted by Bharat Biotech along with the department of biotechnology Covid Suraksha programme, government of India.