As the world anxiously awaits a possible vaccine to prevent thousands of people getting infected from COVID-19 virus, around 35 pharmaceutical companies and institutes are racing against time to create such a vaccine. At least four such companies, have just begun testing in animals.
The science journal of American Association of Advancement in Science (AAAS) reports that Boston based biotech firm, Moderna Therapeutics is speeding the immunization through an internal safety trial in a joint effort with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
The company said that it intends to distribute the vaccine to health care workers by September, this year. Moderna has shared little detail in published papers about the technology it's developing.
This remarkable speed to make a vaccine stems from the early Chinese efforts to grouping the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
The Chinese medical specialists wasted no time in sharing that sequence to research about gatherings as right on time as January. The cooperation enabled the research companies far and wide to develop the live virus and study how it attacks human cells and makes pepole sick.
In fact Coronaviruses have caused two other recent epidemics — severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in China in 2002-2004, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which began in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
Leading english every day Guardian in its report says that "the two cases, work started on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now re-purposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring.”
Besides, Moderna Therapeutics also built on earlier work on the Mers virus led tests with help of Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in US.
According to the general standards, clinical preliminaries for such vaccines are held in the three unique stages.
The first stage includes testing of vaccines on two or three dozen healthy volunteers to search for its adverse effect and safety.
The second stage is about testing the vaccines on two or three hundred people living in epidemic affected some part of the world to see how powerful is the vaccine.
The third stage is to enlarge the sample which runs into a thousands of many people being tested for effectiveness of the vaccine to battle the disease.
All the companies including Moderna will currently need to experience these stages to finally come with a successful vaccine for the pandemic.
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