A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the Pandemic and where new variant are likely to originate.
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What is Biological E?
Theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/15/biological-e-corbevax-covid-vaccine
The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, has been working on vaccine prototypes for years, and created a new vaccine called Corbeva.
Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it.
It's possible for anyone with the ability to make a vaccine for hepatitis B or produce a yeast-based vaccine to do the same thing.
There are patent wars over vaccines. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are at odds over who should get credit for certain discoveries that led to the Covid-19 vaccine. If Moderna is found to have violated the federal government's patent, it could be forced to pay more than $1 billion.
Activists have called for Pfizer and Moderna to share technology and knowhow for producing their vaccines, as well as taking the fight to the World Trade Organization. According to the World Health Organization, low-income countries with few vaccine research and production facilities have a low rate of vaccinations. The US has provided more than one-third of the population with a third vaccine dose.
Texas Children's hospital said that the vaccine was over 80% effective against the Delta strain in the clinical trial. The vaccine is being tested against the Omicron variant.
The process of creating the vaccine uses the same method as the production of the hepatitis B vaccine.
Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are authorized in the US using different technologies. Moderna and Pfizer use technology. The platform introduces the immune system to Covid-19 by giving instructions on how to make spike proteins, which coat the surface. The immune system can fight the virus if a person is exposed. Johnson & Johnson has a vaccine that introduces immune cells to a harmless cold virus.
The Corbevax vaccine uses a platform called a rgysis sub-unit technology, which places a piece of Covid-19 in yeast cells. The yeast cells copy the vitalProtein and then introduce it to the immune system.
The yeast system is used to make theProtein, directly and synthetically. The yeast is asked to make aProtein that is similar to the one made by the virus. The immune system is presented with the vaccine after the body processes it. You don't want your body to do any major manipulation of the coding.
The Corbevax vaccine only requires standard refrigeration, unlike the Pfizer vaccine, which requires ultra-cold storage in transit.
The Corbevax vaccine will soon be able to be produced 100 million doses a month, thanks to Biological E, an Indian pharmaceutical company that has a longstanding relationship with the team.
The developers of Corbevax relied on philanthropic donations to get them over the finish line after being overlooked by government organizations. The Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development is an academic and scientific institution, but they had to stretch their resources in order to gain visibility as a serious candidate for Covid vaccine development.
She said that they are learning how to do work that is regulatory-enabling, that enables good quality, good reproduction, and good record-keeping. There are pros and cons to every technology. Nobody is saying that one is the super-duper. The solution includes all thevaccines. When there is a situation of such gravity around the world, you try to use all solutions.
The reason the vaccine was not patented was because of the team's shared philosophy of humanitarianism and their desire to engage in collaboration with the wider scientific community.
We want to make a difference in the world. This was the right thing to do and we had to do it. We did not blink. We didn't think about how we could take advantage of it. If we had been more aware of how the world is so inequitable and how we could have helped from the beginning, we wouldn't have had to think about what we were going to do.
She hopes her move will encourage others to follow suit and make affordable and accessible vaccines for other diseases.
We need to break the paradigm that it is only driven by economic impact factors. The return in public health is something we have to look at.
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