Covid-19: The search for a vaccine
have obtained very high neutralising antibody titres.
A Dna-vaccine developed by INOVIO Pharmaceuticals has gone into trial in South Korea. In partnership with Cadila Pharmaceuticals in India, the Us-based Novavax is using the virus-like particles (VLP) platform, which has been previously used for the papilloma virus vaccine. Using this platform, the company has marketed seasonal influenza, H1N1 and rabies vaccines in India. This vaccine is also undergoing Phase-i trial in the United States (US) and Australia.
Oxford University is using a chimp-adenovirus platform to develop a vaccine, which will be manufactured by Astrazeneca in Europe and Serum Institute in India. It is in the Phase-i trial stage. Johnson & Johnson is using adeno-26 platform and pre-fusion spike protein, which has been successfully used by them in Ebola and RSV vaccine trials. This platform is not being used by any company in
India.
Aurobindo has bought a small startup from Pfizer in the US and is using a vesicular stomatitis virus platform for vaccine development, which is likely to be manufactured in their unit in Hyderabad. The other projects moving fast in India are the Csir-funded Ccmb-bharat Biotech partnership using a killed-vaccine for which the strain was obtained from the National Institute of Virology, Pune. Zyduscadila in India is also in the fray with a measles virus platform. Other projects are using an attenuated viral vaccine, which is similar to the vaccines being developed in China.
There are 110-plus vaccine projects going on at the moment, with unprecedented approaches being adopted by developers. Emergency use of the vaccine is given as soon as they finish Phase-ii and move to Phase-iii, and mass manufacturing begins taking up the risk of failure in Phase-iii. Countries in which they are situated often fund for risk reduction and provide market commitments. This has never happened before.
One of the challenges will be to determine who gets vaccinated first. There are several scenarios, one of them is to vaccinate frontline workers, doctors, health care, sanitation and delivery workers. The second scenario is to give them to children, and the last is to conduct ring vaccination around the hotspots to immunise all the contacts and the asymptomatics. The World Health Organization will provide guidance in this matter.
Even when we have a vaccine, public health measures will be equally important, including avoiding risky behaviour, keeping social distancing, working on nutrition and access to poor populations and creating a mechanism to avoid animal and human transmission.
If trials fail and a vaccine is not available in time globally, the world will have to live with this disease for a very long time.