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A 'HOME-MADE' Covid vaccine which works along the same lines as the Pfizer and Moderna inoculations is a step closer to completion and should be ready for use by next year.
Dr Felipe García, researcher at Barcelona's IDIBAPS-Hospital Clínic, leads the team, which is split across various medical centres and laboratories in the city and also in Madrid, Santiago de Compostela (Galicia) and the Belgian capital, Brussels.
Once on the market, it will be the first Spanish-made RNA-messenger vaccine against Covid-19.
The RNA-messenger method is used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are currently being administered across Europe – as opposed to the virus vector method used in the AstraZeneca, or 'Oxford' vaccine.
But Spain's version 'has some subtle differences', says Dr García – being slightly farther behind the others already in use, the team has been able to take advantage of research previously carried out and build on it with their own.
“We've designed it in a different way – the Pfizer and Moderna developers took the whole 'S' protein, whilst we just took certain sections of it; this improves immune response, as it's based upon a computer model,” Dr García explains.
“In terms of its effectiveness, it should be about the same, or perhaps even last longer, but it's early days to be able to tell as yet.
“We're also looking into ways that it could be stored without needing refrigeration at exceptionally low temperatures, as is the case with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.”
Development and research started in May 2020, and 'some positive results' are now filtering through, but the team is waiting to be able to finish its testing on animals so it can evaluate findings from this phase and then start clinical trials, on humans.
Clinical trials are hoped to take place over the course of 2021, meaning distribution of the final vaccine is unlikely until 2022.
“That's what we hope, but in the field of vaccines and with the tools and resources we have at our disposal, it's hard to predict how things are going to go,” admits Dr García.
“This said, if new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to appear, our vaccine is the only one in Spain at the moment that could be quickly adapted, in a matter of weeks, to respond to them – that's why having it here in our country is so important.
“We need to be prepared, at all times, for a worst-case scenario. We can't work on a best-case scenario because, if we had to stop the research, it would mean starting again from zero.
“It could be that the vaccines currently available aren't enough if, for example, there are 'loopholes' that don't protect against new mutations; if people need to be vaccinated several times; or if the pandemic becomes a long-term or permanent situation that involves at least certain segments of the population having to be vaccinated again and again, like with the 'flu jab.
“That's why it's so important to have multiple vaccines available; and the one we're developing as a consortium is looking very promising.
“At the very least, if it later turns out it wasn't necessary to have multiple vaccine types available, we'll still have developed a technology which hadn't existed in Spain before and which could easily be used for future medications.”
Dr García has been working for the IDIBAPS laboratory for the last eight years on an HIV vaccine, and has worked with several of the consortium in the past.
The question was raised a year ago as to whether the RNA-messenger method used in the HIV inoculation research could be extrapolated to a Covid-19 vaccine, says Dr García.
And developing vaccines in Spain is a completely new phenomenon.
“The groups working on vaccines the most were tending to develop immunisation for livestock, commissioned by corporations with a great deal of financial weight, but as for vaccines for humans, manufacturing new ones, distribution...only a small handful of us academics has been working on these, and nothing like the scale of creation and production of livestock inoculations.
“Spain needs to invest in developing human vaccines; the pandemic has made this very apparent, since the level of investment in immunisation for people is nothing like that of Germany or the USA,” reveals Dr García.
“There's a massive gulf between the resources we in Spain are working with and those which are available to many other countries.”
NEW legislation aiming to protect the public from telephone scams and cold-calling is under construction, and will attempt to attack it at source by tightening up on commercial use of customers' personal data.
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