Corbevax: an anti Covid vaccine for everyone (really)
A new protein vaccine and free from patents: where it comes from, who is behind it and how much Corbevax will cost
It comes from Texas but there is also some Italianness in the new Corbevax vaccine. Behind the serum made in the United States and already approved by the Indian health authorities, in fact, there is also Maria Elena Bottazzi, an Italian-Honduran researcher who participated in the project.
WHO HAS FINANCED IT
As Bottazzi and Peter Hotez, one of the researchers leading the project, stated , the vaccine was made "without any support from the US government or the G7, relying almost exclusively on the private philanthropy of entities in Texas, New York and elsewhere. ".
The Texas Children's Hospital vaccine, reports the Washington Post , was developed for $ 7 million by predominantly private investors. One of the big initial investors was Austin's Tito's Vodka, which donated $ 1 million in May 2020.
WHO PRODUCES IT
Corbevax is the brainchild of researchers from Texas Children's Hospital and the private research center Baylor College of Medicine , also from Texas. The team that was already developing the vaccine just over a year ago began collaborating with Indian pharmaceutical company Biological E to initiate clinical trials on efficacy and risks.
WHAT KIND OF VACCINE IS
The latter vaccine, like Novavax's Nuvaxovid , unlike mRNA (Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna) or viral vector (AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson) vaccines is a protein vaccine, which means that to provoke an immune response, it supplies cells with proteins and adjuvants, rather than a fragment of the genetic code.
THE ADVANTAGES
Protein-based vaccines, as Bottazzi also recalled, "have already been widely used to prevent many diseases [including whooping cough, hepatitis and meningitis, herpes zoster, ed ], are safe and can be produced at low cost using economies of scale ".
In addition to having a long history of studies and tests of safety and efficacy behind them, they are easy to store and inexpensive.
THE REAL DIFFERENCE WITH OTHER VACCINES
Two years after the start of the pandemic, Bottazzi and Hotez underline in Scientific America , Corbevax "is the first anti Covid vaccine designed specifically for global health".
And this time around it doesn't seem like the usual announcement because no patents have been filed on the vaccine technology, making it accessible and achievable for all vaccine manufacturers in the world.
Hotez, who called it a "gift to the world", said the technology had already been transferred to vaccine manufacturers in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Botswana.
"It is a milestone for global vaccine equity, something we believe will overcome hesitation – Bottazzi and Hotez wrote -, and serves as a model for how to develop a powerful vaccine for use in the event of a pandemic in the absence of substantial public financing".
"We hope it will be used in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where vaccine availability has generally been woefully inadequate," they added.
"Hotez and Bottazzi – writes the Washington Post – will not earn a cent". Only Baylor College will receive a share.
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST
According to Indian media, cited by the Washington Post , the price per dose could be around $ 2.50 – which, the newspaper notes, would make Corbevax not only the cheapest Covid vaccine in India but one of the cheapest in the world. world. Hotez, in an interview with NPR , even spoke of 1-1.5 dollars per dose.
INDIA LEADER
The central government of India, stated in the article of the two researchers, has already ordered 300 million doses, and Biological And, the company that produces the vaccine, expected to produce 100 million doses or more per month starting in February . About 150 million doses have already been produced and are ready to be distributed.
In addition to what the company is supplying to India, Biological E plans to deliver more than a billion additional doses to other countries – a record figure when compared to the crumbs donated by countries involved in the UN Covax program.
RESULTS OF THE STUDIES
The tests, carried out in India during 2021, involved more than 3,000 participants and showed that Corbevax should be at least 80% effective against symptomatic disease. The company, however – fueling the criticisms of some – has not yet publicly released the data because, as Hotez wanted to underline, behind there are small companies and "not large multinationals".
Specific data for the Omicron variant will arrive soon, Bottazzi and Hotez say, but it is speculated that it is at least as effective as most vaccines currently available.
Compared to AstraZeneca's serum, the experts add, studies have shown that their product "induced a greater amount of neutralizing antibodies against the Delta and Beta variants."
In a phase 3 study carried out in India, Corbevax caused mainly mild adverse events, "making it perhaps one of the safest Covid vaccines in use."
Clinical trials on children are also underway in India.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/corbevax-un-vaccino-anti-covid-per-tutti-veramente/ on Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:41:48 +0000.