Business Journal: Boston firms developing Covid vaccines

GreenLight Biosciences is listed in the Boston Business Journal as a firm developing Covid vaccines.

GreenLight Biosciences is listed in the Boston Business Journal as a firm developing Covid vaccines ready for the next wave of demand after the crisis moment. Extracts from the article are below:

The race for a Covid-19 vaccine has led one local company to jump from agtech to vaccine work. 

For the first several years of its operations, Medford-based Greenlight Biosciences was focused on “green chemistry,” creating non-petroleum based molecules and other ingredient replacements for fuel, agriculture, drugs or nutrition. It is still developing new pesticides and agricultural products. But recently, it’s thrown its weight behind a Covid vaccine that uses messenger RNA, much like Moderna, Pfizer, Translate Bio and CureVac NV. 

It’s likely the company’s drug candidate will act as a second-generation vaccine that could improve upon and supplement products already on the market. Co-founder and General Manager Marta Ortega-Valle declined to estimate when Greenlight will begin in-human tests. Creating a single dose vaccine that can be stored at standard temperatures is top of the Greenlight’s list. Both features lend themselves to a product for lower income or developing countries. 

“Storage at minus-80, for developed countries, may be something that you can do in a moment of crisis,” Ortega-Valle said, referencing the temperature needs for Pfizer’s vaccine, which have made it challenging to disperse, even in the U.S. “It’s an evolving commercial moment. It’s only as we start to deliver the doses that we are going to realize, not only what are the immediate needs, but the most important needs.”

Read the full article here.

Find out more about how GreenLight manufactures RNA here.