Bangalore,11 May 2020: The vaccine is based on Premas Biotech’s proprietary D-Crypt™ technology, where the host is Saccharomyces cerevisiae or baker’s yeast, which we use every day, in breads and bakery products. This platform has previously delivered many similar viral proteins; e.g. recombinant Spike protein (Rota virus). Premas has already licensed the technology for joint development of the vaccine to US company, Akers Biosciences.
“We have filed the relevant applications to start pre-clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Dr Prabuddha Kundu, Founder and CEO of Premas Biotech.“ Using the D-CryptTM technology, we believe that if this candidate is successful, it has the potential to produce multi million doses a week, as drug and vaccine manufacturers are used to this platform and there are many existing facilities and processes that can be used for such production,” 
“With this technology and collective knowledge of over three decades of usage of yeast as a host globally, we at Premas were able to express the three antigens in multiple formats in less than two months” Dr Kundu said. 
The yeast-based vaccine production technology is used for Hepatitis B and other vaccines by manufacturers in the country. Premas is looking towards expediting their processes and reach the first in human studies after regulatory approvals.
“Premas Biotech may even consider scaling up its existing facility or set up a large scale manufacturing facility for the national requirement,” revealed Dr Kundu in a conversation with eN-ABLE, the ABLE newsletter.
Premas Biotech is producing three Corona virus Antigens in the D-Crypt™ technology which are Spike (S), Envelope (E), Membrane (M). The major advantage is that a multi antigenic approach will allow to overcome the possible presently known and future mutations, and help generate a robust vaccine and immunity against the virus.
Industry experts said Premas is probably the only company globally to take a multi-antigenic approach that will help in tackling many different mutations of the corona virus. The vaccine antigens have additional usage, and can be used to develop antibody diagnostic kits.
 “We believe that our technology will be more affordable than other vaccine candidates being developed and easier to manufacture. We believe that this could be the first triple antigen composition that will come from an Indian company, ready for the world,” Dr Nupur Mehrotra,  Co-Founder  of Premas Biotech  was quoted by Express Pharma recently.

The Gurugram-based company is preparing to make available few million doses of the vaccine weekly if Indian regulators approve it quickly through partners or on its own for India’s urgent needs.