The premier Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is developing a Covid vaccine, informed Karnataka Health Minister K. Sudhakar on Thursday, which has reportedly proven to be more successful than existing vaccines.
The IISc vaccine has reportedly shown a more significant neutralising effect than existing vaccines like Covishield or Covaxin and it can be stored at a room temperature of up to 30 degrees.
According to the IISC website, vaccine production would cost Rs. 15 crore. The aim is to create a vaccine that can be mass-produced quickly to protect frontline health workers, medical staff, senior citizens, and people with co-morbidities like cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Informing the development following a meeting with IISc Director Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Dr Sudhakar tweeted about the vaccine, stating:"Our govt will extend all possible support to IISC, Bangalore in expediting clinical validation and obtaining regulatory approvals for oxygen concentrators and collaboration with industry for manufacturing."
Currently, the Serum institute and Bharat Biotech are manufacturing Covid vaccines in the country and the vaccination drive has so far reached 19 crore doses. However, the IISc vaccine is still in progress and has yet to undergo clinical trials, maybe a game-changer in the country's pandemic war.
Director Rangarajan said the vaccine under development at the institute showed a better neutralising effect than other vaccines in use. "The vaccine being developed in our institute can be stored at room temperature (30 degrees Celsius), which enables the government to scale up its distribution," he said.
IISc vaccine
The institute is developing the vaccine in collaboration with the Mynvax start-up, incubated by its society of innovation and development. "The project needs Rs 15 crore fund to conduct further studies like creating the first-generation vaccine candidate in the next four months, production technology in eight months and to initiate Phase 1 human trials in 12 months," IISc said on its website.
The start-up estimates that 100 million doses are required to meet the country's requirements as the pandemic persists in the medium to long term. Molecular Biophysics Professor at the IISc, Raghavan Varadaraj and a biotech entrepreneur founded Mynvax in 2017 to develop novel recombinant vaccines to fight the human influenza virus.
In addition, the IISc has partnered with the state government to provide low-cost oxygen concentrators, with a production capacity of around 90%, thus, making them more effective than Chinese concentrators, which produce approximately 40-50 per cent.
