“How to take a vitamin”: the first oral covid vaccine close to experimentation
For the first time since the pandemic, a COVID vaccine in pill form, taken by mouth, will enter the early stages of clinical trials within months.
The company working on the drug (a joint venture of Oramed Pharmaceuticals, Israel) and Premas Biotech, India), announced in a press release that it hopes to begin the first phase of clinical trials for its drug "Oravax" in humans by June.
Oral vaccines are an option under consideration for 'second generation' vaccines, designed to be easier to manufacture, administer and simpler to distribute.
An oral vaccine could "potentially [allow] people to take the vaccine on their own at home," said Nadav Kidron, CEO of Oramed, in the release.
The capsules would become particularly useful if COVID-19 vaccines were "recommended annually as the standard flu shot," he added.
Prabuddha Kundu, co-founder of Premas Biotech, told the Indian press that administering the vaccine would be "like taking a vitamin pill" and that "we are more than 100% sure that the technology works and is promising".
The results of the preliminary animal tests would soon be published in a scientific journal, he added.
The news comes as Pfizer announces the start of human trials of an antiviral pill to treat the coronavirus that could be used at the first sign of disease.
If successful, the pill could be prescribed in the early stages of an infection to block viral replication before patients become seriously ill. The drug binds to an enzyme called a protease to prevent the virus from replicating. Protease inhibiting drugs have been successful in treating other types of viruses, including HIV and hepatitis C.
Among the major drug makers, Merck & Co. has one of the few coronavirus pills that is far ahead in human testing. Its investigational antiviral drug Molnupiravir works by a different mechanism than the Pfizer drug and is in an advanced stage of human trials.
Of course, there is also the downside: it is much easier to get a person to take a drug for life if it is in pill form.
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The article "How to take a vitamin": the first oral covid vaccine close to experimentation comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/come-prendere-una-vitamina-il-primo-vaccino-covid-per-via-orale-vicino-alla-sperimentazione/ on Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:00:33 +0000.