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While a coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer looks promising and highly effective, the interim analysis released on Monday only tells part of the story, said Paul Duprex, director of the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, which is working on several vaccine candidates.
He said to think of it as waking up in the morning and looking outside at the time.
“The blinds are closed and you peek behind the blinds. It looks like a sunny day, but you don’t know if it will be a perfectly sunny day because you haven’t looked at the long-term forecast, ”Duprex said. “It looks promising, but there is still a long way to go.”
One of the main takeaways, he said, is that “this is a work in progress and the first one might not be the best, but at least we can look at the interim analysis and thinking, ‘Uh, it might have legs, it might be able to take the next hurdle, “and that’s good,” he said. “But we have to balance that with unknowns. It’s always good to look at the data in between and think, “It went well, it looks promising, let’s see where it goes.” ”
Health Secretary Dr Rachel Levine, a senior health official from Pennsylvania, expressed optimism but pointed out that there were still safety studies and a review process that need to take place.
“Our job comes when they say it’s done,” she said.
Levine previously outlined the state’s plan for a vaccine distribution, much of which will be dictated by federal organizations like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It will be a phased approach, she said, with phase 1 mainly involving frontline health workers, those who work with particularly vulnerable populations and some who are part of that vulnerable population. Phase 2 will focus on more of the same – more healthcare workers and those vulnerable to the virus. Phase 3 will see the vaccine distributed to the general public.
How it is distributed in Phase 3 will depend on the vaccine (s) approved. For example, she said, Pfizer’s vaccine should be stored at temperatures around minus 70 degrees centigrade – something most clinics and doctor’s offices cannot do.
“We’ve already reached out to hospitals and health systems” to start planning, Levine said.
Progress of the Pitt vaccine
At Pitt, research is underway on a number of different approaches to creating a vaccine against the virus.
“We are filling a pipeline. We come up with good ideas and we test them, ”he said. “Then we try to see if we can transfer them to people who are not like us – people who will make products.”
One of those ideas uses the measles vaccine, which Duprex says is easily manipulated, as a platform. The idea is to take pieces of the genetic sequence of covid-19 and put them in the measles vaccine. From there, researchers can analyze whether vaccine test subjects start to create antibodies in response to the vaccine.
Duprex said his team is working with the Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s leading vaccine manufacturers. He said if working with the company keeps him from saying how advanced the potential vaccine is, he could say it’s “an active collaboration” that both parties are excited about.
Another approach tested at Pitt uses messenger RNA, which is a molecule that carries pieces of DNA code to other parts of the cell. The idea behind its use as a vaccine mechanism is to use genetic material to build a piece of the virus which is then introduced into the body, which then produces an immune response.
This is the same technique used in Pfizer’s vaccine that was proven to work in its early days.
Although Pitt’s trials on an RNA-linked vaccine are “much more upstream,” they are still being actively worked on, he said. The news from Pfizer could give the researcher working there a boost, he said, and the “ideas he’s working on can get into the pipeline and transform something that could be version 2, version 3 of a vaccine ”.
He said Pitt’s wide range of expertise allows research into vaccines and treatments for covidus “to go from soup to nuts” in one place.
“What you get in Pittsburgh is full service – you don’t have to go to another university across the street, in the neighboring state, not even another in the state,” he said. -he declares. “We can switch from nut soup… right here.
Megan Guza is a writer for Tribune-Review. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, [email protected] or via Twitter .
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