A national public research team has developed a drug candidate about 50 times stronger than remdesivir in killing the Covid-19 virus and will transfer the technology to private companies.

The research team, called the Convergence for Emerging Virus Infection (CEVI) under the National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST), will also transfer vaccine candidate, which is five times more capable of producing antibodies than existing ones, and a test kit to private companies to commercialize them.

It will hand over vaccine candidate substance HK inno.N (formerly CJ Healthcare), drug candidate to LegoChem Biosciences, and diagnostics kit to Wells Bio.

The candidate substance for treatment is a new chemical that shows excellent effects on the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus as well as Covid-19.

In a study with monkey kidney cells, the ability to kill half of the virus at a specific concentration was about 50 times higher than that of remdesivir. As the substance has high drug properties and low toxicity, it has a strong chance of being developed as a new medicine for Covid-19, according to CEVI.

The candidate material for a vaccine is a synthetic antigen that will be used for developing vaccines to prevent Covid-19 and mutated coronavirus infection.

Cell and mouse studies showed that the ability to generate neutralizing antibodies by Covid-19 spike protein was three to five times higher than the existing vaccine antigen being developed.

“Neutralization,” which shows the efficacy of the vaccine, is a function to generate antibodies that bind to the antigen in humans and neutralize the antigen's activity.

CEVI and Wells Bio developed the molecular diagnostic kit through joint research.

Wells Bio developed the careGENETM N-CoV Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction kit with the support of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology. The test kit received emergency use approval by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on May 28.