May 13, 2023
Dr. Shankar Musunuri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ocugen, which is a biotechnology company focused on vaccines for public health, gene therapies targeting rare diseases in the retinal space, and cell therapies for regenerative medicine applications in cartilage repair. One key opportunity is to develop an inhalation vaccine that would be durable and efficient at preventing and controlling transmission of COVID and able to be combined with a flu vaccine.
Shankar explains, "There is a linkage if you take some of these vaccines and gene therapies. Some of the processes we use to make gene therapies can also use similar processes for vaccines. So there is a shared science, a shared manufacturing platform, and shared expertise. And then if you take the biotech itself, cream-of-the-cream in the pharmaceutical industry, they work in cell and gene therapies and vaccines, very complex science."
"If you have a mucosal vaccine, which will create antibodies in the respiratory tract and control where the virus enters, it can neutralize it. And also, if you have neutralizing antibodies in your respiratory tract where the virus enters, you'll not only neutralize what is entering, it'll prevent transmission or control transmission of the disease."
"If we can move COVID into this annual booster, just like flu, we thought we could provide solutions for COVID, flu, and combination. So, imagine yourself walking into a CVS, and what Ocugen wants to do is provide solutions for customers. If you want only flu, you'll get your flu inhalation vaccine. You want only COVID, and you'll get that. If you want a combo, you're going to get a combo. So we created three different vaccines, COVID, flu and combination, using our inhalation technology and novel vector platform."
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