Human trials began in India Monday on an inexpensive coronavirus vaccine developed by Baylor College of Medicine scientists, a candidate expected to be widely deployed in the Third World if it proves effective.
About 360 healthy people between the ages 18 to 65 years will get the vaccine, produced by the Baylor team this spring at the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development. In August, the team partnered with India’s Biological E. Limited (BE), which will manufacture some 1.2 billion doses of the vaccine.
“This vaccine represents an urgent biotechnology innovation for ensuring health equity and combating the COVID-19 pandemic,” Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor and co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development, said in a statement.
Hotez’ team produced the vaccine in a few months after Chinese scientists posted the virus’ genetic sequence in mid-January.
The team used the same technique it did years earlier to develop a vaccine against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the coronavirus that circulated in 2002-2003.
That vaccine worked in animal models, but was never tested in humans.
Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna candidates, which are based on brand-new #genetic #technology, the #TCH vaccine uses a common yeast-based method, the same deployed in the manufacturing of the hepatitis B vaccine.
Production is expected to cost no more than a couple dollars a dose. No amount has been mentioned for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but it is expected they will cost the federal government a hefty amount. The government has pledged to provide those vaccines for free.
Hotez has said the TCH vaccine can be used in the U.S. as well as the developing world. But its early-stage trial is well behind those of Pfizer and Moderna, which this month reported more than 90 percent efficacy results in late-stage trials.
Trial participants in India - there are five sites – will get two doses, 28 days apart, both administered by injection. Results of the trial are expected to be available by February.
[I’ll wait for this vaccine. Thank you.]
Pfizer and Moderna candidates are based on brand-new #genetic #technology [No, thank you.]
Todd Ackerman is a veteran reporter who has covered medicine for the Houston Chronicle since 2001. A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, he previously worked for the Raleigh News & Observer, the National Catholic Register, the Los Angeles Downtown News and the San Clemente Sun-Post.
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