The first batch of COVID-19 vaccine has been shipped, by a biotech company named “Moderna Therapeutics,” based in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the US.
The vaccine was made 42 days after the genetic sequence of the COVID_19 viruses, called SARS-CoV-2, was released by Chinese researchers in mid-January, reports Time.
The first shipment was sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) on February 25, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, where it will be made ready for human testing in the beginning of April, the report said.
NIH scientists already tested an antiviral drug called “Remdesivir” which was developed for Ebola, on a patient infected with SARS-CoV-2.
A team at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre will be the first to lead the trial test for making a drug for treating COVID-19.
A passenger who was brought back to the US after testing positive for the disease aboard the Diamond Princess cruise has already volunteered for the ground-breaking study, the report further added.
Those diagnosed with COVID-19 and hospitalized will also be part of the study.
The medicine “Remdesivir” already showed encouraging results among animals infected with two related coronaviruses, one responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and another for causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Volunteers will be randomly assigned to receive either the drug or a placebo intravenously for 10 days. Blood tests and nose and throat swabs will be taken every two days from them (volunteers) to track the virus in their bodies.
Even if the drug shows some efficacy in keeping blood levels of SARS-CoV-2 from growing, it could help to contain spread of the infection, the report mentioned.
The vaccine was developed in record time because it’s based on a relatively new genetic method that does not require growing huge amounts of the virus.
Instead, the vaccine is packed with mRNA, the genetic material that comes from DNA and makes proteins.
Moderna loads its vaccine with mRNA that codes for the right coronavirus proteins which then get injected into the body.
Immune cells in the lymph nodes can process that mRNA and start making the protein in just the right way for other immune cells to recognize and mark them for destruction.
Dr Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, while speaking to TIME, said: “mRNA is really like a software molecule in biology, therefore, our vaccine is like the software program to the body, which goes and makes the [viral] proteins that can generate an immune response.”
This vaccine method can be scaled fast and save valuable time when new diseases such as COVID-19 emerges and starts infecting tens of thousands of people.
More than 100,300 people have been infected globally, according to a Reuters tally based on statements from health ministries and government officials as of Friday.
The death toll reached 3,407, while the total number of infections hit 100,002, after a surge in cases worldwide since 1700 GMT Thursday, notably in virus hotspot Iran which clocked 1,234 new cases, reports AFP.
