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Peter Kremsner, Director of the Tropical Institute of the University Clinic of Tübingen:
“Everyone is waiting for a good vaccine that is effective and well tolerated. And we are already under enormous pressure.”
The world waits. To control the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus, that should be clear by now, a vaccine is needed. One is already approved in Russia, but not all regulations are said to be met. That doesn’t sound safe.
Peter Kremsner, Director of the Tropical Institute of the University Clinic of Tübingen:
“I myself would not be dealing with a vaccine that was only approved in China, or only in Russia, or only in the United States. I am definitely waiting for one that is approved in the European Union.”
And many parts of the world are still waiting, and are also looking … at Tübingen.
Here in the city of Baden-Württemberg with almost 90,000 inhabitants, one of around 30 studies is being carried out around the world in which an active ingredient is already being tested in people.
The vaccine was manufactured by the Curevac company and is being tested at the Tropical Institute of the University of Tübingen. Peter Kremsner is the studio director. The challenge for him is enormous, science usually takes a long time. In the pandemic, however, everything has to go faster. Too much faster.
For a vaccine to be safe, it must go through three phases in the clinical trial, that is, during the human trial. In phase one, the active ingredient is tested for safety and tolerability on about 100 test people. Phase two tests, among other things, which dose works best, in around 300 to 400 people. Phase three is much more complex, thousands of vaccinated people are needed here. They are checked for effectiveness. And it is precisely this most important phase that Russia is said to have skipped.
The first phase is already well advanced in Tübingen. More than 100 subjects have already been tested. One of them is Nicole Held. You will have your first vaccination this week. Subjects have to come to the clinic ten to twelve times in 13 months, but they are not always vaccinated. There are also controls and a lot of conversation. There is about 125 euros for each appointment. But many of them don’t just participate to make money.
Nicole Held, subject of the study in Tübingen:
“Just help, get the vaccine to market soon, and let the majority benefit from it.”
In addition, there is also hope that the vaccine is already working and that they are protected. The concomitant phenomena so far have been limited. In a small number of subjects, there are common side effects of vaccination, such as high fever, tiredness, or headache.
Part of the study are preliminary discussions, preliminary examinations, blood draws, the vaccine is reprocessed each time and then must be administered in half an hour. The vaccination itself is the boss’s business.
The vaccine that Kremsner and his institute are testing for Curevac is the so-called mrna vaccine. MRNA is a type of messenger molecule that contains the building instructions for the production of proteins. For the vaccine, the researchers provided the mRNA with assembly instructions for a Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus protein. After vaccination, human cells produce this protein, which the body recognizes as foreign. It forms antibodies and other defense cells against it. To date, such a mrna vaccine has never been approved. This time it should work.
Peter Kremsner, director of the studio in Tübingen:
“Now it looks great in terms of tolerability. I’m sure.”
But what is different now? Why should everything work better in this case, and then so fast? Or the other way around: why does it take so long if not?
The answer is in the economic possibilities. A lot of money is currently being invested in research. The federal government alone has invested 300 million euros in Curevac. The company went public two weeks ago. All this ensures speed.
Peter Kremsner, director of the studio in Tübingen:
“Money makes most, if not practically everything, faster, and so does vaccine development. With a lot of money, you can do a lot of things at the same time, if it is somehow legally possible and okay. with the sequences of procedures, which otherwise I would do one after another. The money speeds everything up or I would have had to wait for other projects or cash injections, now it can work. “
For the Curevac vaccine, phase two should start soon, and phase three will follow quickly. In crown times, transitions are smooth. But this part cannot take place in Tübingen. Because if the vaccine really offers protection against Covid-19 it can only be verified when there are many cases. Otherwise, it would take too many test subjects to ensure that there are as many as possible coming into contact with the virus. Therefore, phases two and three are running in South America, where Corona affects significantly more people than here. . But then there should be results soon.
Peter Kremsner, Director of the Tropical Institute of the University Clinic of Tübingen:
“So you can do it relatively quickly, maybe after three months when phase three starts, which is now safe and effective enough to request conditional approval.”
Conditional approval could, for example, allow vaccination of young, healthy adults. But when would the vaccine be ready for everyone?
Peter Kremsner, Director of the Tropical Institute of the University Clinic of Tübingen:
“That will definitely take a good year, or longer. Because there are so many special groups that they can’t all be screened simultaneously. That will definitely take longer. But the reasonably healthy population 0-120 years old, that should exercise next year.”
So you still need a little patience. Because with all the money, with all the speed, with all the pressure, one thing is clear: there should be no careless and too fast shortcut to a vaccine.
