Chennai: The government on Friday informed that a vaccine being developed by the Pune-based Gennova, has become the country’s first homemade mRNA candidate to get permission for human clinical trial.
In a statement released to the press, the Centre said, ‘HGCO19 (the official name of the vaccine) is stable at 2-8 degrees Celsius for two months’.
“mRNA vaccine carries the molecular instructions to make the protein in the body through a synthetic RNA of the virus,” the statement read.
This is a major development, as if approved, this vaccine could be more effective in Indian conditions than other vaccines, as it remains stable in normal refrigerator temperature.
This further eliminates the need to develop cold storage infrastructure in various parts of the country.
The vaccine is also considered safe as they are “non-infectious, non-integrating in nature, and degraded by standard cellular mechanisms”.
Gennova has developed the vaccine in collaboration with HDT Biotech Corporation, a US firm.
“HGCO19 (the code name for the vaccine) has already demonstrated safety, immunogenicity, neutralisation antibody activity in animals. The neutralising antibody response of the vaccine in mice and non-human primates was comparable with the sera from the convalescent patients of Covid-19,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, the requests for emergency use of vaccines being manufactured by the Serum institute and Bharat Biotech were not cleared by a committee of health experts. Both companies have been asked to submit more data at the next meeting, the date of which has not yet been decided.