Oncology company HDT Bio Corp revealed on Tuesday that the preclinical research, titled "SARS-CoV2 variant-specific replicating RNA vaccines protect from disease and pathology and reduce viral shedding following challenge with heterologous SARS-CoV2 variants of concern" was conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

On 22 February 2022, the company's research paper was published online by eLife a not-for-profit peer-reviewed open access scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences.

The research involved dosing animals with a vaccine targeting a specific variant of SARS-CoV2: ancestral, alpha, or beta. The animals then were challenged with a virus variant matching that of the vaccine as well as virus variants not matching the vaccine. The HDT Bio vaccines matched to a variant shut down the virus in the upper respiratory tract, which includes nasal passages, throat and windpipe.

According to the company, its COVID-19 vaccine is different from current mRNA vaccines. The advantage of using a lower dose of RNA not only is improved overall safety, but also enables to deliver multiple RNA molecules in one vaccine targeting multiple variants of the virus. The dosage level of each molecule would have to be lowered to ensure safety, reducing the vaccine's ability to generate effective immunity.

In conjunction, the company is conducting clinical trials of its COVID-19 RNA vaccine in the US and internationally with with SENAI CIMATEC in Brazil and Quratis in South Korea. The collaboration in China will be announced soon.