BRIEF⁠—NIH and GreenLight to collaborate on COVID-19 vaccine development

GreenLight Biosciences has announced a collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop COVID-19 vaccines that are more broadly protective against new variants and with longer-lasting effects.

GreenLight - in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - will co-design and test mRNA vaccines against coronaviruses with the goal of developing vaccines that confer a more durable immune response than current vaccines.

In addition, they will work together to develop systems that expedite new designs into clinical use.

According to the NIH, cooperative research and development agreements, or CRADAs, “provide an exciting opportunity for NIH investigators to join with their colleagues from industry and academia in the joint pursuit of common research goals. Government scientists serve the larger mission of NIH, to facilitate the development and commercialization of health-care pharmaceuticals and products. Companies also can leverage their own R&D efforts while collaborating in state-of-the-art NIH research.”