Billions of dollars in government funding ploughed into COVID-19 vaccine research during the pandemic has helped push the boundaries of drug research beyond their usual limits in the race to create the jab, says lead researcher of the Spikogen (or COVAX-19) vaccine. Professor Nikolai Petrovsky says the pandemic has been a springboard for major drug firms to further secure their dominance in the pharmaceuticals industry after aggressively securing massive government contracts. “If anything, COVID-19 is the cover. But the real payoff for most of them, as they see it, is if this becomes the technology of the future,” Petrovsky told The Epoch Times. Petrovsky, along with Adelaide-based biotech firm Vaxine, is behind the protein-based vaccine Spikogen. They were one of the Australian-based projects slated to create a COVID-19 vaccine; the other was a partnership between the University of Queensland and CSL, which was shuttered last year after several HIV false …