Pharma firms closer to creating anti-virus drugs
NEWDELHI: With a Covid-19 research consortium being set up by the department of biotechnology easing approvals to speed up research and development, the public and the private sectors are focusing on developing diagnostic kits, testing re-purposed drugs, and developing new drugs and vaccines against the virus that has sickened almost 350,000 and killed over 15,000 globally.
Pharmaceutical major Zydus Cadila, is running preclinical animal trials for two vaccine candidates. “In another four to six weeks, we should have the results of the animal trials. One of the vaccines uses recombinant (relating to or denoting an organism, cell, or genetic material formed by recombination)dna technology and the other uses reverse genetics technology . Depending on the results of the pre-clinical trials, we will decide which to take forward and apply for approvals from the drugs controller accordingly,” said Pankaj
Patel, chairman, Zydus Cadila. After animal testing, companies will need to get approval for human trials.
Reverse genetic technology can be used to create a virus that had weakened potency but is similar enough to the circulating strain to produce an immune response.
“The vaccines are in different stages of development. There are two or three Indian companies and a number of research groups working on them. However, currently, they are not looking at funding supportas they first need support for getting through the regulatory framework,” said Renu Swarup, secretary, department of biotechnology.