How is the low-cost vaccine that uses chicken eggs against the coronavirus

It is the first formula using molecular design that could create stronger antibodies than the range of vaccines currently available. First, clinical trials should determine if it is truly safe and effective in humans.

The vaccine, called NDV-HXP-S, will conclude clinical trials in July and the final phase will last several more months. But experiments on vaccinated animals have raised hopes for the prospects for inoculation .

In this first phase, which is practiced in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam, the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of the vaccine administered at different doses in healthy adults between 18 and 59 years old are evaluated. Phase 2 will include people aged 60 to 75.

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The first generation of coronavirus vaccines, especially messenger RNA vaccines, require specialized ingredients that are expensive to manufacture. Instead, this new formula takes advantage of the infrastructure that many countries already need to build. cheap vaccines against influenza using chicken eggs.

Eggs produce a large amount of virus copies. Based on this, researchers extract viruses, weaken or kill them, and put them into vaccines.

Chicken eggs are a fundamental part of the production of vaccine against influenza every year. And that’s where the promise lies: It’s much easier to scale up manufacturing using this method. Production infrastructure in developing countries is more up to the task. This could theoretically lead to the production of more a billion doses per year.

“It’s a Home Run for protection, ”said Dr. Bruce Innis of the Path Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access, who coordinated the development of NDV-HXP-S. “I think it’s a vaccine of World class“.

Low- and middle-income countries that are currently struggling to get vaccines from richer countries might be able to make NDV-HXP-S themselves or buy it cheaply from their neighbors.

“It’s amazing, it would be a game changer,” said Andrea Taylor, deputy director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Taylor is investigating vaccine distribution and has repeatedly denounced that rich countries are appropriating available formulas.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom, has come to call the current distribution of vaccines “a catastrophic moral failure”.

To prevent this, the University of Texas entered into a licensing agreement for HexaPro, the pioneer protein developed by researchers for this vaccine, which allows companies and laboratories in 80 low- and middle-income countries to use it in their formulations. . without paying duties.