The St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera of the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA) has filed an application with the Health Ministry for registering its own recombinant subunit coronavirus vaccine called Convasel, as follows from information available on the State Register of Medicinal Products.

FMBA chief Veronica Skvortsova said on December 31 that Convasel could be registered in the first quarter of 2022. It was planned to submit the documents for its registration before the end of 2021.

The FMBA’s St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera has developed the Convasel vaccine for COVID-19 based on the recombinant SARS-Cov-2 nucleocapsid protein (N). It has been presented as a new-generation vaccine aimed at eliciting T-cell immunity. The vaccine is intended to elicit a specific T-cell immune response, produce a phenotype of central memory T-cells, and develop an intracellular virus-neutralizing response.

The FMBA obtained permission from the Health Ministry to conduct phase I and II clinical trials of its vaccine on July 19, 2021. As reported, the trials were conducted on 200 volunteers 18 to 60 years of age.