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Vaccine development
Russia
The Russian ‘Sputnik-V’ COVID-19 vaccine produced an antibody response in all participants in the early-stage trials, according to results published on Friday (September 4) by The Lancet medical journal that were hailed by Moscow as an answer to its critics.
The results are not surprising, as the Oxford group has also shown that similar adenovirus-based vaccines do not produce significant side effects in humans and that immune responses to the Spike protein are observed.
The report is a case of ‘so far so good’, but immune responses may not necessarily evoke protection and more research is needed on the effectiveness of this vaccine for preventing COVID-19. “
The Brazilian state of Paraná technology institute, which has agreed to produce the Russian “Sputnik-V” COVID-19 vaccine, said Friday that it plans to conduct phase III trials on 10,000 volunteers in Brazil early next year.
Jorge Callado, director of the Paraná institute of technology, known as Tecpar, said approval for the trial will be requested from Brazil’s health regulator ANVISA later this month.
U.S
Johnson & Johnson will seek 20,000 volunteers for late-stage human trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine in Latin America, a third of the planned total, said one of its public health chiefs in the region.
J & J’s vaccine is one of more than 100 being developed around the world in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected nearly 26.5 million people and caused an estimated 869,323 deaths. Latin America has become the epicenter of the pandemic.
The drugmaker is conducting trials in the United States and Belgium, adding Chile, Argentina and Peru to a list of Latin American countries where it plans to conduct phase III trials along with Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
Its worldwide trials will include 60,000 volunteers.
Germany
German biotech firm Curevac said on Friday it had won nearly $ 300 million in government funding to accelerate work on its prototype COVID-19 vaccine and develop the capacity to produce it at scale.
The Tuebingen-based startup, valued at $ 10 billion after floating last month on Nasdaq, is one of several companies that design vaccines based on molecules that carry a genetic code called messenger RNA (mRNA).
WHO reaction
The World Health Organization is hopeful that a new coronavirus vaccine will be ready internationally by mid-2021, its chief scientist said on Friday.
“Certainly, by mid-2021, we should start to see some vaccines move to countries and populations,” Soumya Swaminathan said at a press conference in Geneva.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “vaccine nationalism” would only delay the effort to quell the pandemic and called for vaccines to be used fairly and effectively.
Tedros said 78 high-income countries have joined the global “COVAX” vaccine allocation plan, bringing the total to 170 countries, and “the number is growing.” He urged others to join in before the Sept. 18 deadline for binding commitments.
Joining the plan guaranteed those countries access to the world’s largest vaccine portfolio, with nine candidates currently in the pipeline, he said, adding that another four were “promising.”
Reuters / Newshub.
