The human trial of Covaxin, India’s first vaccine started giving new hope of itss development . All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna and Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Rohtak have begun the clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The vaccine has been developed by the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech in collaboration with National Institute of Virology (NIV) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) earlier approved the biotech company to initiate the phase I and II human clinical trials.
Covaxin has been derived from a strain of the novel coronavirus isolated by the National Institute of Virology in Pune. Bharat Biotech developed an “inactivated” vaccine at its high-containment facility at Genome Valley in Hyderabad.
“Once the vaccine is injected into a human, it has no potential to infect or replicate, since it is a killed virus. It just serves to the immune system as a dead virus and mounts an antibody response towards the virus,” said the company.
Covaxin underwent pre-clinical testing on animals to see if it is safe. “Results from these studies have been promising and show extensive safety and effective immune responses,” the company earlier said.
The human trials of Covaxin has begun at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna. AIIMS-Patna chose 10 volunteers to start the human trial of Covaxin.
In normal times, vaccine development takes years as research is largely dependent on grants and funds. The widespread impact of the pandemic has spurred governments, pharmaceutical companies and global alliances to fund vaccine research more liberally, thus contributing to a speedy development in a big way.
The types of vaccines also differ, ranging from ones that use an inactivated or dead virus to trigger an immune reaction to non-replicating viral vectors which involves using a different, harmless virus to deliver the pathogens into the body for generating an immune response.
