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UW-Madison researchers and the vaccine companies FluGen and Bharat Biotech are developing and testing a vaccine against COVID-19 called CoroFlu, they announced Thursday.

CoroFlu will build on FluGen’s flu vaccine candidate known as M2SR. That vaccine, based on research by UW-Madison virologists and FluGen co-founders Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann, is a self-limiting version of the influenza virus that can induce an immune response against the flu.

Kawaoka’s lab plans to insert gene sequences from SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, into M2SR so that the new vaccine will also induce immunity against the coronavirus, according to a UW-Madison statement.

Work on CoroFlu, including testing in laboratory animal models at UW-Madison, is expected to take three to six months. Bharat Biotech, based in Hyderabad, India, will then scale up production for safety and efficacy testing in humans.

CoroFlu could be in human clinical trials by this fall, the university said.