Covid-19: Scientists making quiet progress on vaccines

BENGALURU: With Covid-19 covering a vast expanse, research institutes — from the US, UK, India and

Australia

— seem to be making quiet progress on probable vaccine candidates. Researchers have shared 115 genome sequences to understand how the virus works, on the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data website.


The pre-clinical model may be ready by April as animal studies are critical for vaccine candidates to progress to phase 2 human clinical studies. Pune-based Serum Institute of India has announced its vaccine candidate, being developed with US-based Codagenix, will be market-ready by early 2022, while Jenner Institute at University of Oxford is working with Italian manufacturer Advent Srl to produce 1,000 doses of its vaccines for the first clinical trials.

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has been working with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and

Industrial Research Organisation

(CSIRO) on preclinical models. CEPI, which receives funding from India’s department of biotechnology, aims to develop preclinical models for evaluating vaccine candidates from four CEPIfunded consortia: CureVac in Germany, Inovio and Moderna in the US and the

University of Queensland

, Australia.

Massachusetts-based Moderna Inc has shipped vials of its vaccine to

US National Institutes of Health

for studies on healthy volunteers. Pennsylvania-headquartered Inovio Pharmaceuticals is collaborating with Beijing Advaccine Biotechnology Company to advance the development of its vaccine.

Trevor Drew, director of the

CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory

, hoped to “have something ready for vaccine producers” by March or April. India-born SS Vasan, who leads the CEPI project at CSIRO, said, “We’ve grown the virus for our research and reconfirmed the genomic sequence published by Doherty Institute. We have got promising results with our initial susceptibility studies...,” he added.