COVAXIN: DCGI approves human trial of Bharat Biotech's coronavirus vaccine
New Delhi : Coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China and it rapidly spread across the world to numerous countries and infected a large number of people. India currently has 5 lakh plus confirmed coronavirus cases of which 2 lakh plus cases are active. The best minds and the top scientists and researchers are rushing to find a vaccine or a cure that can help us all control and contain this highly contagious virus and stay safe in the near future. AstraZeneca and Moderna are some of the leading candidates but India too has a part to play in this rat race.
Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has been working in association with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in order to find a vaccine that can save lives. While we finally have some hope with all the anti-viral medicines available in the market to treat COVID-19, there is some more good news coming our way. India might end up getting ahead in the race to find a vaccine for coronavirus. Bharat Biotech just received approval from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for its Phase I and Phase II HUMAN CLINICAL TRIALS after submitting all the detailed information about their vaccine as well as the result of their preclinical studies. This clinical trial has been scheduled to begin from the month of July and if things go in the right direction, we might end up being the some of the first ones to find a way out of this global health crisis.
For a very long time, India has been a leading manufacturer of medicines and vaccines and while there are many other companies across the world who are in the middle of their human trials, India's progress has brought more hope for us all. This potential vaccine created by Bharat Biotech has been named COVAXIN and it happens to be an inactive vaccine created from a strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and has shown promising results in the previous studies and research done by the company. Bharat Biotech has had a great track record and they are the ones who have played a major role in developing and launching medicines in India like the Rabies, Polio, Rotavirus, Japanese Encephalitis and they were also the first company across the world to file a global patent for Zika vaccine.
Bharat Biotech is also working in collaboration with the University of Wisconson-Madison and vaccine manufacturer FluGen to develop another vaccine for coronavirus called CoroFlu. This candidate for the vaccine is being developed based on a flu vaccine. They are working towards finding a way to use a gene sequence from the SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 along with the M2SR (FluGen's flu vaccine candidate) so that it can induce an immune response against flu as well as this strain of coronavirus.
