Jerome Kim, Director General of IVI, sat down with Korea, Factual, a weekend radio show on tbs eFM [101.3MHz] to discuss vaccine development for COVID-19, how international governments and organizations have been coordinating following the outbreak, and progress on IVI’s ongoing work to develop vaccines against MERS.

Read below for a snippet of the conversation, and listen to the full episode here:
Korea, Factual: I understand that the International Vaccine Institute has been working on a Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or, MERS, vaccine which is similar to the novel coronavirus—how has that been going so far?
Jerome Kim, IVI: “That has been a great collaboration with a Korean company, Gene One, which made the vaccine. We call it a DNA vaccine, so it’s really just the genetic material that’s found in you or me, but this genetic material encodes a part of the MERS virus. That allows it to be expressed in a body so a person doesn’t get infected with MERS, just gets the piece of MERS DNA, and that allows your body to make immune responses against part of the MERS protein. That trial, which is a phase 1/2 trial, is being conducted at Seoul National University, and we’re hoping to have results by the end of the year.”

This interview aired live on 2/15, but is available here.