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COVID-19-RESEARCH-VACCINE
World awaits coronavirus vaccine as hectic research underway
By Anika Rahman
DHAKA, May 13, 2020 (BSS) – Efforts to develop a vaccine to fight Covid-19
visibly picks up pace amid research group reports of headways though no
vaccine so far completed clinical trials while World Health Organisation
(WHO) asked all not to expect the vital remedy in next one year.
According to global media reports over 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are
being developed while several of them were now exhausting clinical trials but
experts fear possible setbacks and roadblocks might not allow the finished
product to be widely available in 2020.
WHO said there are currently 8 COVID-19 vaccines to have entered the human
trial phase but visibly preferred not to generate any fabulous hope about any
overnight development regarding their effective applications while experts
suggest it took years to produce such vaccine for an infectious disease.
Being the leading global health agency WHO, however, pioneers a campaign
to raise an extra fund of US$8 billion to fight coronavirus and implement an
Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator for global vaccine development.
The Reuters news agency appeared to have come up with the latest
development in the research initiatives saying multinational Moderna Inc said
on Tuesday secured US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “fast track”
designation to its experimental coronavirus vaccine.
According to the report the move would up the regulatory review process as
the FDA’s “fast track” designation made the vaccine eligible for its
“priority review” status.
The US agency now aims to take a decision on approving the drug within six
months if the process found it alright while the company received $483
million funding from a US government agency to accelerate development of the
vaccine.
FDA earlier also granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to pharma giant
Roche’s COVID-19 antibody test as the company claims its test has 100%
sensitivity and over 99.8% specificity at day 14 post-PCR confirmation of
SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Moderna said it expected to start a late-stage study of the vaccine in
early summer for getting a marketing application approval in 2021.
The vaccine works on the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which instructs
cells in the body to make specific coronavirus proteins that then produce an
immune response.
According to the report the approach can be used in many types of
treatments but has not yet been approved for any medicine.
Moderna has been racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine along with
several other pharmaceutical entities and research groups’ including drug
makers like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer Inc, which is working with Germany’s
BioNTech SE.
“The initial US trial aims to recruit up to 360 participants and follows a
smaller German study of 12 volunteers, which began late last month,” the
world’s famous scientific Nature journal reported.
A global coalition led by EU member states, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia,
the UK, and Norway pledged US$8 billion for developing Covid-19 vaccines and
to ensure universal global access while the World Bank, Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, and other wealthy donors contributed to the initiative.
The United States created its own project, “Operation Warp Speed”, which
aims to spend several billion dollars to produce enough doses of a potential
vaccine to protect the US population.
The UK is at the front of the global effort and it has already begun human
trials of its vaccine.
Oxford University’s Jenner Institute recently teamed up with AstraZeneca
for the development and production of its viral vector vaccine, which started
Phase I/II trials at the end of March.
The Serum Institute will provide production capacity in India. ChAdOx1,
named after its chimpanzee adenovirus vector origin, already successfully
completed two studies in rhesus monkeys.
If the positive animal results can be replicated in humans, Oxford’s
vaccine could start Phase II/III as early as June, according to the Jenner
Institute.
However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday warned that an
effective coronavirus vaccine may never be found, as he set out a strategy to
ease current lockdown ensuring people’s protection from the deadly virus.
In terms of country-specific development regarding vaccine, Italy, one of
the worst victims of the COVID-19 recently said they nearly readied their
invention to be administered on human body.
Media reports said Italy was now carrying out tests at Rome’s infectious-
disease Spallanzani Hospital where researchers successfully managed to
generate antibodies in mice that “work” on human cells.
Italy’s major ANSA news agency claimed a research firm called Takis
developed world’s first COVID-19 vaccine generating antibodies in mice that
“work on human cells”.
The development came recently a day after Israel claimed that it achieved a
“significant breakthrough” in developing an antibody to the coronavirus and
applied for a patent.
Israel’s defence minister Naftali Bennett last week declared that the
country’s Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) developed an antibody to
neutralise the virus responsible for COVID-19 as “it can attack the virus
within the bodies of the infected”.
Japan is expecting to begin clinical trials for vaccine to treat
coronavirus in July, the country’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday
adding that work on vaccines were being carried on several institutions,
including University of Tokyo, Osaka University and the National Institute of
Infectious Diseases.
The first human trial for a vaccine was announced last month by scientists
in Seattle, skipping any animal research to test its safety or effectiveness.
In Oxford, the first human trial in Europe started with more than 800
recruits — half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine and the rest a control
vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus, a BBC report
said.
The vaccine was developed in under three months by a team at Oxford
University with Professor Sarah Gilbert of vaccinology at the Jenner
Institute, leading the pre-clinical research while the team said they could
know within six weeks if it would work.
The NewYork Times recently reported that as Pfizer and the BioNTech
announced that their potential coronavirus vaccine began human trials in the
United States and even if the tests were successful, the vaccine could be
ready for emergency use as early as September.
The Chinese Xinhua reported both Thailand and India were making
significant effort to develop vaccines for COVID-19 while over 30 Indian
vaccines were in different stages of Corona vaccine development with a few
going on to the trial stages, it added.
The Chinese media said China developed three inactivated vaccines and a
recombinant one has been put into clinical trials, and three of them have
entered the second phase of clinical trials, including an inactivated vaccine
developed by Sinovac Biotech, a Beijing-based company.
Major European powers, along with Japan and Canada, made the biggest
pledges from around 40 countries, but there was no official US
representation, weakening the event and raising the prospect of an
uncoordinated competition to develop and produce a vaccine for COVID-19.
BSS/SPL/ARS/AR/1715 hrs