Barely two days after Nigeria announced a major breakthrough in the hunt for a lasting cure for the dreaded coronavirus, India has made its own headway.
Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd (SIIPL) announced that a vaccine candidate for the novel COVID-19 is expected to progress to human trials phase within six months.
Developed in partnership with American Biotechnology firm Codagenix, the vaccine has progressed to the pre-clinical tests phase where it is tested on animals.
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that the global mortality rate for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, was 3.4 percent.
Although no deaths yet, the world’s second and Africa’s most populous nations have had 28 and one positive cases respectively.
Foremost scientist and ex-chairman Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu, gave Nigerians a breather when he revealed that a potential cure is in the works.
India has followed suite with its own discovery, unsurprisingly, though, as it accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s exports of generics by volume.
While several efforts have been made in the stride to finding a cure, as well as in controlling the outbreak, this is the first vaccine-virus strain to progress to the pre-clinical trial phase.
Speaking about the development, Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India, said, “I am glad to share that our combined efforts with the team at Codagenix have borne fruit, and we hope to save millions of lives with this vaccine”.
“This breakthrough also shows the country’s preparedness to counter global epidemics like the novel coronavirus (COVID-19),” Poonawala added.
He also said that the vaccine candidate has been developed using a laboratory-made synthetic virus, which is an important breakthrough as it will significantly reduce the time taken to build a shield against the virus.
“We hope to be ready with the vaccine by early 2022. Our vaccine-virus strain is identical to the original virus and can generate a robust immune response,” Adar Poonawala said.
The vaccine-virus strain will be the fastest ‘Made in India’ such vaccine to progress to the human trials phase within six months. The cost of the project is upto Rs 300 crore, SII aims to secure external funding for the project via various global partners
