Curevo, a Seattle-based a vaccine development company under South Korea’s GC Pharma, said Monday that it had received clearance from the US drug regulator to start phase one clinical trials for a next-generation shingles vaccine.

The US Food and Drug Administration has advanced the company’s Investigational New Drug application for CRV-101, a vaccine candidate for the treatment of herpes zoster, a viral disease commonly known as shingles.

As a result, Curevo, along with the Seattle-based collaborator Infectious Disease Research Institute, is on track to initiate the phase one trials in the fourth quarter of this year, the company said.

The study will focus on determining whether CRV-101 is safe and well-tolerated in healthy adults as well as on measuring the immune response to the vaccination, according to Curevo.

“While there have been significant recent advances in the development of new shingles vaccines, there remains a need to continue innovating novel strategies for this important health priority,” Corey Casper, CRV-101 Project Leader at Curevo and IDRI’s Chief Scientific Officer, said in a statement.

“This vaccine has been engineered with the latest advancements in protein science and immune stimulating molecules that we think should make it highly effective while minimizing the side effects that often accompany shingles vaccination.”

Shingles typically presents as a painful blistering rash that develops on one side of the body as a result of the reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, which also causes chickenpox. The risk of shingles is said to be higher for people over the age of 50.

There are currently two immunization options for the prevention of shingles available in the US: GSK’s Shingrix and US-based Merck & Co.’s Zostavex.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)