hVIVO plc announced that it has signed a £5.2 million contract with a global biotechnology company headquartered in Asia Pacific to test their respiratory syncytial virus ("RSV") vaccine candidate, using hVIVO's established RSV Human Challenge Study Model. The Company also announces that it will provide a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2022 on 25 January 2023. The Phase 2a double-blinded placebo-controlled human challenge trial will take place at the Company's specialist quarantine facilities in London and will evaluate the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of the client's vaccine candidate against RSV infection.

The study is expected to commence in H2 2023, with the revenue being recognised across 2023 and 2024. As part of the study, hVIVO will recruit healthy volunteers via the Company's dedicated volunteer recruitment arm, FluCamp. This is the first human challenge trial contract that hVIVO has signed with a client in the Asia-Pacific ("APAC") region in over a decade, and is a growth area for the Company as it seeks to further diversify its client base and orderbook.

The contract also further highlights the growing demand for challenge trials from global biopharmaceutical companies as they seek to gain cost-effective efficacy data to de-risk their development programmes and enhance their candidate's value before commencing later-stage field studies. hVIVO has three decades of experience and expertise in safely conducting challenge studies across a range of respiratory viruses, including various strains of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and human rhinovirus (HRV - common cold virus), and asthma, as well as malaria.