AstraZeneca on Thursday struck a deal with the firm behind Imperial College London’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine to develop and sell drugs based on its self-amplifying RNA technology platform in other disease areas.

VaxEquity could be awarded up to $195million if it meets certain milestones. The deal also includes royalties for approved drugs, equity investments from AstraZeneca, and investment by Morningside Ventures, which is a life sciences investor.

AstraZeneca has a Covid-19 adenoviral vaccine and highlighted the use of self-amplifyingRNA (saRNA), technology for novel therapeutic programs that go beyond the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s chief research officer said that VaxEquity is a new and promising platform in our drug discovery toolbox.

The technology works in a similar way to the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Self-amplifyingRNA vaccines encode the instructions for the coronavirus protein to be made by the host cells. They also make many copies of this RNA which can allow the dosages to be lower and more affordable.

According to Imperial’s Shattock, “It’s a little like having a manufacturing plant. Instead of one recipe, you have many copies you can pass around to multiple production lines in the cell to make more protein.” It has the ability to take lower doses.

Imperial’s Covid-19 vaccine will be retooled in order to provide a better immune response. We are also keeping an eye out for future coronavirus variants.

AstraZeneca can collaborate with AstraZeneca to develop 26 drugs targets against rare diseases and cancers.

Pangalos stated that self-amplifyingRNA will enable us to identify novel therapeutic areas not accessible to conventional drug discovery.

U.S. companies Gritstone bio and Arcturus also are developing saRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Shattock stated that safety data from the initial COVID-19 vaccine trials were encouraging. Phase 1 results for its improved vaccine will be available in early 2019.

His explanation was that we came from an academic background, which is why our progress was slower. We might have been quicker if we had that relationship with AstraZeneca at the start of 2020.