Eyegene said Tuesday that the government would support its recruitment of patients to help conduct the clinical trials of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine.

The announcement drew industry watchers’ attention to whether the state support would facilitate the development of a homegrown Covid-19 vaccine.

According to Eyegene and the Korea National Enterprise for Clinical Trials (KoNECT), the two partners will collaborate for patient enrollment of the local phase 1 study of EG-COVID, a Covid-19 vaccine candidate, starting this week.

“We have applied to KoNECT for its clinical trial participant linkage program, and the support will be available starting this week,” an official at Eyegene told Korea Biomedical Review.

KoNECT also confirmed that it would support Eyegene this week after reviewing the application.

Eyegene hopes that the KoNECT’s support will help resume patient recruitment. The company had planned to release the interim results of the local phase 1 trial in 2022, but the schedule was delayed due to difficulty enrolling patients.

“It is true that patient recruitment for the phase 1 study of EG-COVID was behind schedule because of the nation’s high vaccination rate. However, we’re searching for various methods to solve this problem,” the official at Eyegene said. “We will monitor the enrollment of subjects who underwent screening and re-schedule the time for the release of interim results based on the vaccine administration to the last patient.”

Eyegene said it was in the final stage to apply for a phase 1 study of EG-COVID in Australia.

Last Wednesday, Eyegene announced developing a new vaccine to fight the Omicron variant.

Omicron, which has many mutations in the spike protein, could avoid the effect of existing Covid-19 vaccines, Eyegene said.

The company said preparations for a vaccine targeting Covid-19 variants had progressed significantly.

If the company secures plasmids to synthesize the Omicron’s spike protein mRNA, new vaccine development against Omicron will gain fast momentum.

To do so, Eyegene is searching for a local producer of plasmids.

“At a plant of BMI Korea on Jeju Island, we are adding mRNA production facilities, and the work is nearly done,” the Eyegene official said. “If we produce plasmids through outsourcing, we will be able to manufacture mRNA vaccine immediately.”

Eyegene has received an mRNA candidate from PharmCADD.