Switzerland and Israel will start testing a vaccine against COVID-19

April 24, 2020, 13:58

The COVID-19 infec­tion has spread rapid­ly around the world, tak­ing life after life. And the worst thing is that there is no cure for it. How­ev­er, med­ical experts are work­ing hard to find a vac­cine. And it seems that the sci­en­tists of Switzer­land and Israel man­aged to get clos­er to vic­to­ry.

Pho­to: freepik

Swiss success

Infor­ma­tion has appeared in the for­eign press about the inten­tions of Switzer­land to start test­ing its own vac­cine against coro­n­avirus infec­tion. One of the first to announce this was in the lab­o­ra­to­ry of Mar­tin Bach­mann from the Insti­tute of Immunol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bern (Switzer­land). Accord­ing to local doc­tors, they have devel­oped an effec­tive RBD vac­cine against the causative agent of the coro­n­avirus COVID-19.

“Our chances of suc­cess are very good. One of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Switzer­land as a coun­try is its prag­ma­tism. And when it comes to accel­er­at­ing the process of find­ing a (such) vac­cine (like this one), all inter­est­ed insti­tu­tions and struc­tures here are rather inclined to find a gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized com­pro­mise, show­ing a will­ing­ness to work in con­cert,”

- com­ment­ed the head of the Insti­tute Mar­tin Bach­mann.

Pho­to: freepik

Accord­ing to the sci­en­tist, the cre­at­ed drug will act as an irri­tant to the immune sys­tem using a bind­ing domain (RBD). That is, that part of the pro­tein spikes on the sur­face of the virus that attach­es to recep­tors on human cells, allow­ing it to pen­e­trate.

Swiss sci­en­tists claim that this vac­cine dif­fers from antivi­ral drugs from oth­er lab­o­ra­to­ries and is based on a unique approach. It uses some kind of “virus-like par­ti­cles”. Unlike the virus itself, they are not infec­tious and there­fore pro­vide the body with a good immune response.

Pho­to: freepik

Inter­est­ing­ly, the pro­to­type vac­cine of Mar­tin Bach­man­n’s lab­o­ra­to­ry was cre­at­ed back in Feb­ru­ary 2020, when the genome of SARS-CoV­‑2, which caus­es a coro­n­avirus dis­ease, was deci­phered. Sci­en­tists have high hopes for the suc­cess of their own drug and hope to con­duct clin­i­cal tri­als by mid-autumn.

Israel is not far behind

Mean­while, Israel is prepar­ing for per­son­al tri­als. Already in the sum­mer, experts will begin human test­ing of vac­cines against coro­n­avirus, as report­ed in the local press, cit­ing the Israeli vac­cine devel­op­ment com­pa­ny MigVax.

Accord­ing to the com­pa­ny, the first tests will start in May. First, sci­en­tists will test the effec­tive­ness and safe­ty of the vac­cine in rodents, and in the sum­mer they will con­duct the first stage of clin­i­cal tri­als in humans.

Pho­to: freepik

Test­ing will last from six to nine months, and as a cure, Israeli doc­tors will adapt the vac­cine against avian infec­tious pneu­mo­nia into an oral vac­cine against COVID-19. The result of the exper­i­ment is pos­si­ble, sci­en­tists believe, since the dis­eases are genet­i­cal­ly and mechan­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar. In their opin­ion, such a vac­cine will con­tribute to a com­plex response of the immune sys­tem.

What for­eign tests will lead to and whether it will real­ly be pos­si­ble to get a vac­cine against coro­n­avirus, we will be watch­ing. In the mean­time, take care of your­self, stay at home and fol­low pre­ven­tive mea­sures.

The opin­ion of the edi­tors may not coin­cide with the opin­ion of the author of the arti­cle.