A BARDA-funded project to develop a needle-free, intranasal COVID-19 vaccine appears discontinued, halting a promising approach to broader protection and slowing future vaccine innovation.
A BARDA Project NextGen award supporting development of a promising intranasal, live-attenuated COVID-19 vaccine—designed to provide broader and longer-lasting protection than current vaccines—appears to have ended in 2025 following shifts in federal priorities under the new administration. The BARDA contract with Codagenix had a ceiling of up to $389 million to advance the vaccine toward a Phase 2b clinical trial; however, publicly available spending data indicates that only the $10 million base period was obligated, suggesting that later-stage funding associated with the trial was not carried forward.
This next-generation vaccine was created using synthetic biology to design a replication-limited live virus vaccine and is administered directly into the nose and airway, mimicking nature infection to generate strong and durable immunity. The planned trial would have compared its performance against licensed mRNA vaccines, as well as generated proof-of-concept data demonstrating the platform's broader applicability for other disease threats.
The discontinued support is likely to curtail near-term clinical development of this needle-free COVID-19 vaccine, which had the potential to block infection at its source and provide more resilient protection against emerging variants—an approach widely viewed as critical for preparedness against future coronavirus and respiratory threats. This setback could slow innovation not only for COVID-19 but also for the underlying vaccine platform, which is being advanced to produce more durable, lower-cost vaccines for other for high-priority threats, including dengue, polio, RSV, yellow fever, and pandemic influenza.