US-based firm leads COVID-19 vaccine race, clinical trials show promising early results: Experts
New Delhi: As scientists across the world work frantically to find a vaccine against COVID-19, which continues its rapid global spread, all eyes are on US-based company Moderna's encouraging early results on a small group of healthy volunteers.
Cautioning that a vaccine is still months, maybe even a year away, experts said the US-based biotechnology firm s results have propelled it to a pole position in the race of 118.
Eight candidate vaccines for COVID-19 are in the clinical evaluation, while 110 are in the preclinical stage, according to the WHO's latest draft landscape. Preclinical development is a stage of research during which important feasibility, iterative testing and drug safety data are collected, while clinical trials are research studies performed on people.
Early data from its vaccine candidate mRNA-1273 showed it produced protective antibodies in a group of eight healthy volunteers, Moderna said.
The other closely watched COVID-19 vaccine is the one being developed by scientists at Oxford University. It appears protective in a small study of six monkeys, promising findings that led to the start of human trials late last month.
Because Moderna's is the only vaccine having demonstrated any kind of immunologic response in the COVID-19 field, we would consider this to be the leading candidate, said Michael Breen, associate director, Infectious Disease, at GlobalData, a UK-based data analytics and consulting company.
Of the vaccines in human trials, only two have demonstrated any kind of effectiveness, Breen told PTI, noting that the Moderna study proves that the platform can lead to the production of antibodies against a given virus.
Moderna on Monday announced positive interim clinical data of mRNA-1273, from the Phase 1 study led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The data comes from eight people who took part in a 45-subject safety trial that kicked off in March. The study showed the vaccine was safe and all study participants produced antibodies against the virus, according to the company.
Globally, one vaccine candidate that is promising is Moderna's mRNA based vaccine that showed promising results in the early trials, Upasana Ray, assistant professor at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in Kolkata, told PTI.
RNA is the genetic material of the viruses. While conventional vaccines are developed with an inactivated virus or using proteins made by virus, messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines work by introducing a synthetic sequence of the viruses' genetic material that encodes the disease-specific protein to trigger the body's immune system, the experts explained.
Discussing the Oxford University vaccine, she said the work deserves applause but needs additional supportive information and experiments .
The preliminary findings of the Oxford study appeared on the preprint server bioRxiv. A preprint is a full draft research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed or published in a journal.
British drug maker AstraZeneca teamed up with researchers at the Oxford Vaccine Group and the Jenner Institute in developing the vaccine.
Breen described their ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 candidate vaccine as a standout . While this vaccine has yet to demonstrate efficacy in humans, it was shown to be able to prevent infection and disease from COVID-19 in a primate model, he said.
While this needs to be replicated in humans, it is one of only two vaccines to have demonstrated any effectiveness in reducing infection due to COVID-19, making it a highly interesting candidate .
Though the Moderna and the Oxford vaccines are in a leading position, there are several other vaccines, including those being developed in India, in the running.
In India, eight organisations are in the fray with a vaccine candidate , half of which are companies and the other half non-industry, said Brooke Wilson, associate director, Healthcare, GlobalData.
These organisations are running or planning to initiate 12 clinical trials, one is ongoing, recruiting and the other 11 are planned, Wilson told PTI.
He explained that six of these trials are specifically for a COVID-19 vaccine while the other six trials use a vaccine developed for other indications, such as tuberculosis, adding that the majority of the trials are in Phase I, followed by Phase 3 and Phase 2.
Explaining the various phases in the development of a vaccine, E. Sreekumar, chief scientific officer at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Kerala, said Phase 1 trials are small-scale, usually involving few participants, to assess whether the vaccine is safe for humans. Phase 2 trials often involve several hundred subjects, and mainly evaluate the efficacy.
"The final phase involves thousands of people to further assess the efficacy of the vaccine over a defined period of time, and can last several months, Sreekumar said.
Breen also mentioned China-based Sinovac Biotech's PiCoVacc vaccine which he said has demonstrated efficacy in non-human primates, similar to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.
However, he said Sinovac Biotech does not have the global marketing capabilities of AstraZeneca, which could impact worldwide availability of their vaccine.
In another animal trial, researchers from Fudan University in China last week announced that a single dose of a SARS-CoV-2 simulating particle vaccine induces potent neutralising activities in mice.
These results support further development of ShaCoVacc as a candidate vaccine for COVID-19, the researchers wrote in a paper that appeared in preprint platform BioRxiv.
A vaccine is designed to protect people before they're exposed to a virus -- in this case, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 -- according to the WHO.
It basically trains the immune system to recognise and attack the virus when it encounters it, the world health body noted.
Vaccine development involves many steps starting from designing the candidate, mice immunisation studies and neutralising antibody repertoire testing, other animal immunisation trials like in ferrets, human safety checks, human trials of various levels before it is approved for general use, said Ray
This entire process, she noted, takes at least 12-18 months.
However, the extent of worldwide effort been taken in this area is commendable and promising showing hope of a possible efficient vaccine in near future,'' Ray added.
Umashankar Singh, assistant professor, biological engineering, IIT-Gandhinagar told PTI that the number of different approaches employed for COVID-19 are impressive.
My personal understanding is that all of these strategies will yield results that may suit different profiles of recipients and might end up providing immunity, not exclusively though, against different strains of this virus that will emerge, if not there already, he said.
The number of COVID-19 cases globally has crossed five million with 3,28,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Rupee settles 1 paisa higher to close at 94.15 against US dollar
Mumbai (PTI): The rupee settled with gains of just one paisa to close at 94.15 against the US dollar on Monday, as rising global uncertainty, escalating tensions in West Asia and soaring crude oil prices weighed on investor sentiments.
Forex traders said the INR/USD pair pared its initial losses, but the overall bias remains negative as FII sell-off and elevated crude oil prices restricted the gains for the local unit.
At the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee opened at 94.25 against the US dollar, and touched an intraday high of 94.11 and a low of 94.28 against the greenback during the day.
At the end of Monday's trading session, the rupee was quoted at 94.15, registering a gain of just 1 paisa over its previous close.
On Friday, the rupee extended its losing streak for the fifth day in a row, depreciating 15 paise to close at 94.16 against the US dollar.
"The rupee snapped a five-session losing streak, rebounding in tandem with a rally across regional currencies. However, the mood remains apprehensive as the market braces for a potential RBI intervention around 94.30 and higher crude oil prices," said Dilip Parmar – Senior Research Analyst, HDFC Securities.
On the charts, the USDINR pair has reclaimed its upward momentum, carving out a classic bullish structure of higher highs and lows on the daily time frame, he said, adding that for the coming sessions, 93.80 serves as a support, with 94.40 acting as the primary hurdle.
Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, was down 0.21 per cent at 98.32.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading higher by 2.36 per cent at USD 107.82 per barrel in futures trade.
On the domestic equity market front, Sensex jumped 639.42 points to settle at 77,303.63, while the Nifty surged 194.75 points to 24,092.70.
Foreign Institutional Investors offloaded equities worth Rs 1,151.48 crore on Monday, according to exchange data.
Meanwhile, India's forex reserves jumped by USD 2.362 billion to USD 703.308 billion during the week ended April 17, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Friday.
In the previous reporting week, the forex kitty had increased by USD 3.825 billion to USD 700.946 billion.
