Warm Vaccine effective against all Covid variants
Warm vaccine can be stored for a month at 37°C.
The vaccine triggered a strong immune response in mice.
As per a study conducted by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, IISc’s ‘warm’ COVID-19 vaccine is effective against all SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. The study was published in a peer-reviewed ACS Infectious Diseases journal.
Now what is this ‘warm Covid-19 vaccine’? This Covid-19 vaccine does not need any cold chain. Let us see what this ‘warm’ vaccine means?
All other vaccines need to be transported at cold temperatures i.e. between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius prior to use. Most of the vaccines lose potency if exposed to higher temperatures. Even re-cooling does not help. This is called the cold chain of handling before use. If there is a vaccine that can be used at room temperature, it would be of great advantage.
This developed the idea of ‘warm vaccine’ led by Raghavan Varadarajan of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru collaborated by a few others at IISER-Trivandrum, THSTI- Faridabad and the IISc-incubated startup Mynvax. As per the research, the vaccine triggered a strong immune response in mice, protected the rodents from the virus and remained stable at 37°C upto a month and at 100°C for up to 90 minutes suggesting that a cold chain should not be required for this vaccine.
This can be termed as a big achievement as most of the vaccines require refrigeration to remain effective. Astra-Zeneca needs to be kept between 2-8 °C, while the Pfizer vaccines need to be stored at -70°C.
“Our data shows that all formulations of Mynvax tested result in antibodies capable of consistent and effective neutralisation of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern,” Dr. S.S. Vasan, CSIRO’s COVID-19 project leader and co-author, said.
“Since the start of the pandemic, CSIRO has played a crucial role in fighting COVID-19 by conducting preclinical evaluation of two COVID-19 vaccines including Oxford-AstraZeneca, tracking emerging variants of concern, and monitoring wastewater to detect hotspots in the community," Dr Rob Grenfell, SIRO’s Health and Bio-security Director, said.
“A thermo stable or ‘warm vaccine’ is critical for remote or resource-limited locations with extremely hot climates which lack reliable cold storage supply chains, including regional communities in Australia’s outback and the Indo-Pacific region," he further said.
(sources:thehindu and tnn)