New Delhi: At least seven Indian pharmaceutical companies are working to develop a coronavirus vaccine as they join global efforts to find a preventative to control the spread of the deadly virus that has already infected more than 14 million worldwide.
Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute, Zydus Cadila, Panacea Biotec, Indian Immunologicals, Mynvax and Biological E are among the national pharmaceutical companies working on coronavirus vaccines in India.
Vaccines typically require years of testing and additional time to produce at scale, but scientists hope to develop a coronavirus vaccine in a few months due to the pandemic.
Bharat Biotech was approved to conduct a Phase I and II clinical trial for its Covaxin vaccine candidate, which was developed and manufactured at the company’s Hyderabad facility. Human clinical trials began last week.
The leading lead vaccine from the Indian Whey Institute has said it hopes to develop a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year.
“We are currently working on the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine, which is in phase III clinical trials. In addition to this, we will also start human trials in India in August 2020. Based on the current situation and the latest updates from In clinical trials, we expect the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine to be available later this year, “Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla told PTI.
The company is also developing a live, attenuated vaccine with US biotech firm Codagenix, which is undergoing preclinical testing, he added.
“In addition to the AstraZeneca Oxford and Codagenix vaccine, we have partnered with multiple institutions around the world as manufacturing partners for developing vaccine candidates. These include Themis from Austria along with two others,” said Poonawalla.
Of the partnership with AstraZeneca, Poonawalla said: “The Serum Institute of India has established a manufacturing partnership with AstraZeneca to produce and supply one billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that is being developed by the University of Oxford.”
These vaccines will be for India and low- and middle-income countries worldwide (GAVI countries), he added.
Leading pharmacist Zydus Cadila has said he is looking to complete clinical trials of his COVID-19 ZyCoV-D vaccine candidate in seven months.
The company had begun clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate with the first human dose last week.
Depending on the results of the study and if the data is encouraging and the vaccine is found to be effective during trials, it could take a total of seven months to complete the trials and launch the vaccine, President of Zydus Cadila, Pankaj R Patel said in a release.
Hyratbad-based Bharat Biotech began human trials of its Covaxin vaccine last week at the Rohtak Graduate Medical Sciences Institute.
Phase I and II clinical trials of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine by Bharat Biotech have been approved by the Indian drug regulator after preclinical studies demonstrated safety and immune response.
The company has developed the vaccine in collaboration with the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
Panacea Biotec said in June that it was creating a joint venture in Ireland with the US-based Refana Inc to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.
The company, in association with Refana, aims to manufacture more than 500 million doses of the candidate vaccine COVID-19, and more than 40 million doses are expected to be available for delivery early next year, Panacea Biotec said. .
Indian Immunologicals, a subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), has signed an agreement with the Griffith University of Australia to develop a vaccine against coronavirus.
Others like Mynvax and Biological E are also working to develop vaccines for COVID-19.
Vaccines typically provide the immune system with harmless copies of an antigen: a portion of the surface of a bacterium or virus that the immune system recognizes as foreign. Can a vaccine also provide a non-active version of a toxin? A poison produced by a bacteria? so that the body can devise a defense against it. They must follow higher safety standards than other medications because they are administered to millions of healthy people.
Vaccine testing is a four-stage process: preclinical tests on animals, phase I clinical tests on a small group of people to determine their safety, and to learn more about the immune response it causes, phase II tests are tests of Safety is expanded, and the Phase III test is performed by administering it to thousands of people to confirm its effectiveness.
Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) is tracking around 140 candidate vaccines, of which about two dozen are in various stages of human clinical trials.
Chinese company Sinovac Biotech is advancing to phase III testing in Brazil, while the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca is on a combined phase II / III test in the UK and has recently entered phase III testing in South Africa and Brazil.
Modern, based in the US, hopes to begin phase III trials of her vaccine candidate this month.
Among other leading players, the German firm BioNTech is collaborating with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.
The companies have received the fast-track designation from the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for two investigational vaccine candidates that are being developed to help protect against SARS-CoV-2.
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