Russia and AstraZeneca work together to improve coronavirus vaccine

The British Pharmacist AstraZeneca confirmed on Friday that he would “soon” begin to investigate the association of his coronavirus vaccine with the Russian preparation, Sputnik V, in order to increase its effectiveness.

In a statement published on its website, the pharmaceutical company points out that “being able to combine different vaccines against covid-19 could be better protection and / or improved accessibility“.

The pharmaceutical giant, which is developing the vaccine designed at the University of Oxford, also says it is “important to explore different combinations to help make vaccination programs more flexible, allowing scientists more choice when it is a question of administering them “. as well as to improve “long-term immunity”.

In the memo, AstraZeneca admits that “it is clear that in order to beat the covid-19 pandemic, more than one vaccine will be needed“and recalls that the British government recently announced that it will start a clinical trial in which adenoviral vaccines will be combined with others with mRNA technology.

The British firm is also evaluating how it can evaluate heterologous combinations of different vaccines, while working with partners from industry, governments and research institutes around the world, according to its memo.

He also confirms that “he will soon start exploring with the Russian Research Institute Gamaleya to understand whether two adenovirus vaccines can be successful when combined“.

“Evaluating different types of combination covid-19 vaccines could help unlock synergies in protection and improve accessibility of vaccines and could provide an additional approach to help defeat this deadly virus,” explains the pharmacist.

For their part, the scientists who developed the Russian preparation believe that this combination could “intensify efficiency” of the drug.

In that sense, Russian experts last month urged AstraZeneca in a Twitter post to test the suit.

In their post published at the end of November, the Russian scientists noted: “If (AstraZeneca) is conducting a new clinical trial, we suggest testing a combination regimen of AZ injection with the injection of the human adenoviral vector #SputnikV to increase the ‘efficiency.” .

The announcement comes hours after President Alberto Fernández announced that Argentina had signed the agreement with Russia for the arrival of the Sputnik-V vaccine in the country. The president confirmed that before the end of the year 600 thousand doses will arrive with 300 thousand can be vaccinated people. Between January and February, 20 million more doses will arrive.

Fernández said the contract included a preference for Argentina to be able to immunize an additional 5 million people in March.

Meanwhile, the government announced weeks ago that purchased 22 million doses of the vaccine under development from AstraZeneca with the University of Oxford, which takes place in Argentina.

With information from EFE.

JPE