Oxford Immunotec Global PLC announced the start of a collaboration with Valneva. The Company will perform T cell testing on participants receiving Valneva’s inactivated whole-virus COVID-19 vaccine candidate (VLA2001) with the research use only T-SPOT Discovery SARS-CoV-2 test. The VLA2001-201 study is a randomized Phase I/II clinical study designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine candidate in healthy subjects, the first study of its kind performed in Europe. The Company’s T-SPOT Discovery SARS-CoV-2 test will assess if the vaccination induces a T cell response in study subjects. T-SPOT Discovery SARS-CoV-2 builds on the Company’s experience with their T-SPOT technology platform, used clinically for diagnosis of TB (the T-SPOT.TB test) and the assessment of the immune response to CMV in transplant patients (the T-SPOT.CMV test). The T-SPOT technology platform is a commercialized and regulated ELISPOT platform, which allows for the standardized and reproducible measurement of T cells reactive to SARS-CoV-2. It also allows centralization of sample processing when used with the Company’s T-Cell Xtend® reagent, which extends the time from sample collection to the start of sample processing to up to 32 hours. The T-SPOT Discovery SARS-CoV-2 test has demonstrated in previous studies that SARS-CoV-2 responsive T cell numbers were associated with protection from COVID-19. Collecting T cell data in the VLA2001-201 study may add valuable additional information for assessing the efficacy of Valneva’s inactivated whole-virus vaccine candidate.