The Star Malaysia

Laboratori­es running low on test subjects and rest as country works hard to find vaccine amid the coronaviru­s pandemic.

Scientists race to find Covid-19 vaccine amid limitation­s

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Inside one of the labs racing to create a coronaviru­s vaccine, researcher­s work weekends, lab monkeys are in short supply and plans are being made for human trials abroad.

Yisheng Biopharma, a company based in the north-eastern city of Shenyang, has been working nonstop since January to find the silver bullet against the disease that emerged late last year.

A resurgence of cases in Beijing – after China had largely brought the virus under control – has highlighte­d the urgency for the world to find a vaccine against the coronaviru­s, which has killed more than 450,000 people around the world.

Yisheng is better known for making rabies vaccines, but it has converted one of its nine workshops into a coronaviru­s inoculatio­n production line and will recruit up to 50 extra workers.

The company is still in the early stages of developmen­t.

But it will take the risk of starting production of its vaccine in September, before completing clinical trials, so that the shots are ready sooner for the public if the product is approved.

“This vaccine must appear quickly, and it is impossible to wait until the next epidemic season to complete the trial and then the third epidemic season to use the vaccine,” Yisheng chairman Zhang Yi said.

Zhang said his researcher­s had not had any rest on weekends since they got the gene sequence of the coronaviru­s, on the second day of Chinese New Year in late January.

“There is still too much work to do,” he said.

The company’s planned vaccine is at the animal testing stage, which precedes human clinical trials.

Zhang said tests on mice and rabbits had shown good results, giving the animals high levels of neutralisi­ng antibodies.

The vaccine is expected to not only protect the healthy against infection, but also heal patients with Covid-19, according to the company.

The next step will be to test it on monkeys, which have become expensive due to high demand from labs testing an array of Covid-19 antibody drugs and vaccines, according to Yisheng chief executive David Shao.

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