Hyderabad-based pharma giant, Bharat Biotech, signed a licensing agreement with Washington University School of Medicine to produce a vaccine against Covid-19. The University of Washington is developing a nasal spray vaccine on chimpanzee adenovirus.
The agreement will give India Biotech the right to supply intranasal vaccines to all countries in the world except the US, Japan and Europe.
Phase-1 clinical trials of this vaccine will be conducted at St. Louis University and after obtaining all the necessary regulatory approvals, the next phase of clinical trials will be carried out in India.
Later, the pharma giant will start mass production. Dr. Krishna Ella, Chairman and MD, Bharat Biotech, said that his expertise in making and distributing vaccines would help bring him closer to the people.
He said that initially, they set a target of preparing 10 million doses of the vaccine and that the production of the nasal spray vaccine was much easier than the injection-type vaccine. There will be no need for medical consumers like syringes and needles, he noted, adding that it will also reduce the cost of vaccine distribution.
An attempt is being made to distribute the nasal vaccine as a single dose and this vaccine will help reach more people sooner, said a professor at the University of Washington.
In addition to preventing the transmission of the virus, a nasal spray vaccine will also check for the spread of the virus. As the spray is administered into the nose, it will also enter the throat and prevent the spread of the virus to both organs. Medical experts said the nasal vaccine would work the way any candidate is vaccinated around the world.
India Biotech is already developing indigenous vaccine covacin against covid-19 in collaboration with IVMR-National Institute of Viriology and is in Phase-2 human clinical trials.
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