By Ashley Young-
Scientists in Australia have raised hopes that a new testing for two potential coronavirus vaccines in “milestone” lab trials will be successful.
The trials are expected to take three months and will be conducted on ferrets to determine if either of the two vaccines are safe and effective. The degree of expert collaboration that has gone into this particular testing has made other scientists optimistic that they will crack it. The good news comes as Australia confirmed three more deaths as it passed 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced free child care for anyone who needs it, as the CSIRO has started trials for two potential vaccines
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“Beginning vaccine candidate testing at CSIRO is a critical milestone in the fight against COVID-19, made possible by collaboration both within Australia and across the globe,” Larry Marshall, the chief executive of the CSIRO, said in a media release.
“CSIRO researchers are working around-the-clock to combat this disease which is affecting so many – whether it’s at the AAHL or at our state-of-the-art biologics manufacturing facility – we will keep working until this viral enemy is defeated,” he added.
The CSIRO was engaged to start working on COVID-19 in January by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a global organisation that focuses on developing vaccines. The vaccines, made by Oxford University and U.S company Inovio Pharmaceutical, have been cleared for animal testing by the World Health Organisation and are hoped to prove successful in the global search for a cure.
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Up until now, the general speculation was that it could take up to a year for a vaccine to be found but eager scientists in a race against time are moving fast to seek a once and for all cure to give the world a sigh of relief. Australia’s national science agency are yet to assess the efficacy of the vaccines, and see if they would be safe for humans. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) says its tests will be the first comprehensive pre-clinical trials of the vaccines to use an animal model.
“Normally it takes about one-to-two years to get to this point and we’ve in fact shortened that to a period of a couple of months,” Dr Rob Grenfell from the CSIRO told reporters on Thursday.The CSIRO is testing two options selected by a global consortium overseeing most of this research, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.
VECTOR VACCINE OPTION
One option, developed by the University of Oxford, is a vector vaccine. It uses a “defective” virus to introduce the proteins of the coronavirus to the immune system and induce a response. It is designed to encode certain proteins of the coronavirus to the immune system, prompting the body’s cells to generate those proteins before the immune system reacts to them.
“It’s very important to take a multi-pronged approach to this,” said Prof Drew. “It gives us the best chance of success.”The first results from the animal tests could be revealed as early as June, the scientists said.
If successful, the vaccines could then be moved into clinical trials that could be conducted at labs elsewhere. Scientists are optimistic of the chances of its success. “I cannot recall an example of where the world science teams have actually worked together in such harmony to solve such a perplexing problem.
That in itself gives us a lot of hope,” said Grenfell. “We know that the journey from here has a lot of technical pitfalls and a lot challenges along the way.” The plan is to trigger a person’s immune system by presenting it an inactive form of the virus or certain virus proteins. Once the immune system has been triggered, it will be primed to fight infection if a person gets it after that.
Time will tell how successful the test turns out to be.
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