Why the next vaccine hunt will take even shorter | India News

The flu pandemic began in 1918, vaccine It was only available to the private sector in 1945. But it wasn’t the only vaccine that took years to make. US scientists worked on poliovirus as early as 1935, but the first vaccine was not approved until 20 years later. Vaccine production has always been a slow task prior to Covid-19. But this time, the vaccine is ready in less than a year. This is good news for the future of vaccine development. This is what made it possible.
Plug & play
All old vaccines, whether polio or flu, were made from scratch, but it’s a slow journey.Identify first Virus responsibility In the case of illness, find a way to insert dead or weakened viruses into people and train them to infect them. You also need to find a safe way to propagate the entire vat of the virus (for example, a horrifying scenario when dealing with smallpox). Still, weakened viruses can still cause problems. For example, one in 2.5 million children are infected with polio from the virus in the vaccine. Now imagine a “modular” vaccine. Create a harmless virus in the lab. It can be used as a “mail carrier” to deliver disease-causing virus fragments to the body. It’s like a food processor motor. Continue to change bottles for squeezing, grinding and kneading, but the motor remains the same. And the “mail carrier” will only deliver some of the harmful viruses to your body, so you won’t get sick. This modular vaccine concept has been around for several years. The Oxford Vaccine, manufactured by AstraZeneca and the Indian Serum Institute, is one of them. At its core is a virus made in the laboratory of ChAdOx1 or the “chimpanzee adenovirus Oxford One”, which is it? u, Zika, ChikungunyaAccording to a recent article by the Mers and Prostate Cancer Vaccines, the BBC.The novel Coronavirus Ascended in Wuhan, Oxford scientists were ready for it. China released the full genetic code of the virus on January 10, and the Oxford vaccine was ready in just three months. Human experimentation for the candidate began on April 23.
Less bureaucratic formalism
In fact, it took less time to create a vaccine using the “spike protein” of the coronavirus wrapped in ChAdOx1. Part of the three months was spent on approval and funding, and organizing vaccine production. Cut them out and the actual vaccine development time will be much shorter. Scientists cited in the BBC’s report state that the idea that traditional vaccine development was a decade-long process is false. Vaccine production, even for the virus as a whole, took very little time. Over the years, I’ve spent many years writing many applications and facing many denials. The rapid delivery of the Covid vaccine is largely due to the fact that bureaucrats are out of the way.
Genentech
The Oxford vaccine requires some of the causes of the disease, but the current top two vaccines (P? Zer and Moderna) completely eliminate the actual virus. They use “synthetic messenger RNA”. This is an advanced technology that has never been used before. Messenger RNA or “mRNA” is a naturally occurring chemical that the body uses to tell cells what proteins it should make. Scientists can use synthetic mRNA to instruct cells to make coronavirus proteins. antibody It produces against the virus without exposing it to the virus. Moderna and P? After China released the genetic code of the coronavirus on January 10. Scientists at BioNTech, a German partner at zer, have begun designing a genetic message that directs cells to make antibodies against the virus. They didn’t have to wait for the actual virus sample. Moderna shipped the first box of vaccine vials to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on February 24th. It took only 42 days to make the vaccine.
Hurry and worry
Faster vaccine development is good, but rapid approval of public use poses a dilemma for scientists, the article said. Nature.. For one thing, companies can seek vaccine approval two months after half of the study participants receive the last dose. For this reason, P? zer is ahead of Moderna. However, two-month observations of thousands of people do not reveal all side effects. Rapid approval is also a hurdle for further testing. Once the vaccine is approved, people in the placebo group will also want to be vaccinated. Therefore, it is difficult to measure the effect of vaccination. Also, if there are several approved vaccines on the market, who would like to participate in a new potentially superior vaccine trial?