Valneva Receives Emergency Use Authorization from the United Arab Emirates for its Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine

Valneva SE (Nasdaq: VALN; Euronext Paris: VLA), a specialty vaccine company, today announced that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) granted emergency use authorization for Valneva’s inactivated, adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine, VLA2001.

Thomas Lingelbach, Chief Executive Officer of Valneva, commented, “We are extremely pleased with this new authorization and would like to thank the UAE for their trust and confidence. As the only dual-adjuvanted, whole-virus inactivated COVID-19 vaccine approved by the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention, VLA2001 could offer an alternative vaccine solution to people across the Emirates. This is our second approval in the Gulf countries, and we are hoping that further approvals of VLA2001 will follow elsewhere.”

This authorization follows Conditional Marketing Authorization from the UK MHRA, which was granted last month, and emergency use authorization from the Bahraini NHRA in March 2022.

About VLA2001

VLA2001 is currently the only whole virus, inactivated, adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine in clinical development in Europe. It is intended for active immunization of at-risk populations to prevent carriage and symptomatic infection with COVID-19 during the pandemic and for routine vaccination including addressing new variants. Further, VLA2001 could potentially be suited for boosting, as repeat booster vaccinations have been shown to work well with whole virus inactivated vaccines. VLA2001 is produced on Valneva’s established Vero-cell platform, leveraging the manufacturing technology for Valneva’s licensed Japanese encephalitis vaccine, IXIARO^®. VLA2001 consists of inactivated whole virus particles of SARS-CoV-2 with high S-protein density, in combination with two adjuvants, alum and CpG 1018. This adjuvant combination has consistently induced higher antibody levels in preclinical experiments than alum-only formulations and shown a shift of the immune response towards Th1. CpG 1018 adjuvant, supplied by Dynavax Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: DVAX), is a component of the US FDA- and EMA-approved HEPLISAV-B^® vaccine. VLA2001’s manufacturing process, which has already been upscaled to final industrial scale, includes chemical inactivation to preserve the native structure of the S-protein. VLA2001 is expected to conform with standard cold chain requirements (2 to 8 degrees Celsius).

About Valneva SE

Valneva is a specialty vaccine company focused on the development, production and commercialization of prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases with significant unmet medical need. The Company takes a highly specialized and targeted approach to vaccine development and then applies its deep understanding of vaccine science to develop prophylactic vaccines addressing these diseases. Valneva has leveraged its expertise and capabilities both to successfully commercialize two vaccines and to rapidly advance a broad range of vaccine candidates into and through the clinic, including candidates against Lyme disease, the chikungunya virus and COVID-19.