India's mRNA Covid-19 vaccine to start phase 1 trials

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NEW DELHI:

Two years ago, Sanjay Singh, a biochemist, designed a personalised vaccine called mRNA which attacks the breast tumour cells.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singh then redirected the research to design an mRNA vaccine against the infection.

“The mRNA vaccines have advantages over traditional vaccines, if a virus mutates, we can redesign and get a new vaccine within 45 days,” Singh said.

India’s drug regulatory panel on Wednesday approved human safety studies on the Genova-HDT construct, that uses a similar mRNA platform as the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

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“They’ve stabilised their mRNA vaccine between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius, these are standard temperatures for most current vaccines that would help in easy distribution,” Govindarajan Padmanabhan, a senior biochemist formerly at the Indian Institute of Science said.

The panel under the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation has also given its approval after examining the results on mice, rabbits and pigtail macaques, suggesting the candidate vaccine can generate an immune response against the coronavirus.

Their candidate vaccine is now set to undergo human safety studies in India and the US.

(Edited by Augustine Kharsyntiew)

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