Pune institute begins animal trials for vaccine
NEW DELHI: Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) has joined the race to develop a vaccine against novel coronavirus and announced on Wednesday that they have a candidate, for which animals trials have begun.
The vaccine may be tested on humans as early as six months, pending approval from regulatory agencies, said SII. The project is likely cost ~300 crore.
The SII vaccine candidate was developed in collaboration with a US biotechnology company, Codagenix, which uses viral sequencing data to develop a weakened virus to develop immunity against a disease, according to its website.
“The vaccine candidate has been developed using a laboratory-made synthetic virus, which is a key breakthrough as it will significantly reduce the time taken to build a vaccine against the virus. We hope to be ready with the vaccine by early 2022,” said Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer, SII.
“We are in talks with a number of companies across the globe for potential partnerships. We are also not excluding China as a potential site for our clinical trials. By end-august, we will have data on mice and primates to submit to regulatory authorities to enter into the human trials phase,” he said.
As per the norms on conducting the trials in India, SII will have to submit the data to the national drug regulator, Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).
“The subject expert committee will review after SII submits the data generated from animal trials,” said a CDSCO official on condition of anonymity.
The Department of Biotechnology has invited proposals for vaccine development of COVID-19.