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LONDON: It has been proposed that an experiment be conducted in the UK that will see volunteers infected with a weakened form of COVID-19 in the hope that it can act as an effective vaccine.
The trial, the brainchild of US biotech company Codagenix, may be allowed to start before the end of the year.
The theory behind the vaccine that uses an “attenuated” virus, designed in a laboratory, comes from how COVID-19 uses fragments of genetic code, called codons, that human cells normally use to identify amino acids in order to build proteins. to trick cells into helping the virus replicate within a host.
Human cells cannot always identify codons efficiently, making it difficult for the immune system to detect those used by COVID-19.
Codagenix’s prototype vaccine will act similarly to the original COVID-19 virus, but will replicate at about one-thousandth the rate, which the company believes will help train the immune system to recognize the real thing when faced with to him, and will activate a broader immune response than through other vaccines.
“We recoded a part of the virus genome so that the human host translates it slowly,” said Robert Coleman, CEO of Codagenix.
The technique was first used in the 1950s by scientist Albert Sabin, who used it to eventually develop the oral polio vaccine.
Codagenix believes its version could end up being more effective and more cost-effective than other vaccine prototypes that are currently in advanced testing stages around the world, including the one Oxford University scientists are working on in partnership with the pharmaceutical giant. AstraZeneca.
Codagenix has already conducted early-stage trials of an influenza vaccine using the technique in humans without serious side effects, and has partnered with the Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, to produce it if turns out to be a success.
