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The CSIC's most advanced project, based on the technique that eradicated smallpox, will begin to be inoculated in humans in the coming weeks.
Spanish science, suffering as always from a lack of funds, has not been the fastest in Covid research but is advancing steadily. Their challenge - they explain at the Higher Scientific Research Council (CSIC) - is to achieve one of the best prophylaxis in the world against coronavirus for the future. A compound that, after the current crisis, guarantees "quality" immunization, at a good price and, above all, in the long term. And it seems that things are moving towards those goals.
The most advanced Spanish project of the three in which the CSIC researchers are working, the one that uses a variant of the virus that served to eradicate smallpox, has shown 100% effectiveness in mice, according to the prestigious magazine 'Journal of Virology'. This is a higher immunization percentage than the two large laboratories that already distribute their vaccine in Europe (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna), which have an efficacy that remains at 95%, and much higher than the 70% immunity that obtains the third of the projects that will soon begin to be marketed in the EU, that of AstraZeneca/Oxford University.
As reported this Thursday by the CSIC, with these data the project of scientists Mariano Esteban and Juan García Arriaza is therefore ready to continue advancing towards clinical tests. The next step is the request for permission from the Spanish Medicines Agency for the first clinical trials, phases I/II, which could begin in a few weeks, already with the inoculations to the first humans (100 volunteers in the first stage and more groups). wide in the second).
However, the council did not dare to anticipate when the first 'made in Spain' vaccine might be ready for distribution. In any case, experts believe it is quite difficult for it to be on the streets before 2022 even if the human trials were a success and there were not too many setbacks.
"Robust response"
"We have observed that the MVA-CoV-2-S vaccine candidate generates a robust immune response with the production of neutralizing antibodies and activation of T lymphocytes in mice," explained Mariano Esteban, who directs the poxvirus and vaccines laboratory at the National Center for Biotechnology. (CNB-CSIC), which in this project collaborates with the Spanish biotechnology company Biofabri, belonging to the Zendal group
"The vaccine confers 100% protection against the virus in a humanized mouse model susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, which is very important," Arriaza stressed.
The operation of the vaccine is complex: the virus that would eventually be inoculated has been modified to "express" the complete S protein of SARS-CoV-2, which is the key that allows the coronavirus to enter human cells. This protein is produced as soon as the virus enters the cell and is what 'teaches' the immune system how to recognize the real coronavirus and how to eliminate it.
The study has shown that the administration of one or two doses of this vaccine candidate protects 100% of the 'humanized mice' from the disease and lethality caused by SARS-CoV-2. With two doses of the vaccine, there is complete inhibition of virus replication in the lungs.
"To define a greater spectrum of action of the vaccine and meet the requirements of regulatory agencies for clinical trials, immunogenicity and efficacy experiments are being carried out in the hamster model," detailed the CSIC, which revealed that in The formula will soon begin to be tested with macaques, as a prior step to the clinical phases of experimentation with volunteers.
In March 2020, just a few days after the declaration of the state of alarm with which total confinement began, the Government approved an allocation of almost 30 million euros for research into a vaccine.
