India’s First Covid 19 Vaccine Candidate, Covaxin By Bharat Biotech, Set To Begin Human Trials From July

Hyderabad based biotech company Bharat Biotech has got approval from DGCI to conduct phase 1 and 2 human trials for the Covid 19 vaccine candidate, Covaxin.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

Hyderabad: Bharat Biotech has announced that the vaccine being developed by the company will soon enter human trials. The vaccine being developed by the Hyderabad company is India's first vaccine candidate to enter clinical trials. According to a report by ANI, the company developed the vaccine, Covaxin in collaboration with ICMR and the national institute to virology (NIV) by using a strain of  SARS-CoV-2 which was isolated at the NIV. The inactive virus was then used to create Covaxin in the company’s Bio Safety Level 3 (BSL-3) lab located in Genome Valley, Hyderabad. The report says that the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) has given approval for conducting phase 1 and 2 of clinical trials. In Phase 1 only small groups of healthy individuals receive the trial vaccine whereas in Phase 2 the group is expanded and people from different age groups such as the elderly are added. The company has also said that results from the pre-clinical trials have also been promising. "The proactive support and guidance from CDSCO have enabled approvals to this project. Our R&D and Manufacturing teams worked tirelessly to deploy our proprietary technologies towards this platform," said Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Krishna Ella. A nationwide trial of the vaccine will begin from July 2020 Recently the WHO announced that the COVID-19 vaccine may become available within a year or less. Here are the other frontrunners of the coronavirus vaccine

• The vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca is leading the path to COVID-19 vaccine candidate is the first to reach the final stages of clinical trials. The vaccine candidate ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that causes infections in chimpanzees. The vaccine has entered phase 2 and 3 of the trails and will also be conducting tests in Brazil and South Africa.
• Another vaccine that is leading the race is the one being developed US-based Biotech company Moderna which will begin Phase 3 trials from July. This is an RNA based vaccine and is being developed in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
• According to a report by Reuters, China National Biotec Group is ready to conduct the phase 3 trial of its vaccine in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the first Chinese firm to begin the Phase 3 trial. The company has not disclosed the details of the vaccine or the trial yet.
• Germany based BioNTech and US-based Pfizer have also started Phase 1 and 2 trials of the BNT162 an RNA based vaccine. The company has said that they might be able to start manufacturing from October this year.