Indian Biotech Firm Says it has Developed 2 Vaccines for Zika Virus

Indian biotech firm says it has developed 2 vaccines for Zika virus

"On Zika, we are probably the first vaccine company in the world to file a vaccine candidate patent about nine months ago,” Bharat Biotech managing director Krishna Ella told NDTV.

"...The formulated inactivated vaccine is expected to elicit a strong antibody response as we see humoral immunity offering a primary defense against Zika infection,” he told the International Business Times.

They will now be tested in animal and human trials. If those trials are successful, a vaccine could become available to the public in around four months. The best case scenario is that the biotech firm could make one million doses in that time, according to Ella.

Research into the vaccines began after the biotech firm legally imported a live Zika virus into the country last year. Ella has sought direct intervention from Prime Minister Narendra Modi since then, urging for the vaccines to be fast-tracked through clinical trials.

"The prime minister should take up this project as it helps communities like Brazil and Colombia where we can do vaccine diplomacy. We are a part of the BRICS group and we have to help them. We would love to help. We want global public health to benefit," he said.

Alright, well thanks again India. I look forward to your country's leadership in the humanitarian efforts of medicine, energy, and clean water access going into these next decades as the West's corporate influence over the worlds populations wanes due to disdain of greed. I would like to request 6 doses please for my family now that our governor has declared a medical state of emergency in my county.

Wow, so the Indians have been working on a vaccine for some time. Hopefully the trials will be successful and they will save Humanity from being wiped out by this disease.

As they say, they want global public health to benefit. What they are not saying is we could potentially become stinking rich if we can increase the fear globally.

Yey for BIG Pharma, the saviours of the Human Race.

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978

Yey for BIG Pharma, the saviours of the Human Race.

Without them we would already be extinct.

a reply to: intergalactic fire

Really? Extinct?

I would suggest there would be less Humans on the planet, but I'm not sure about extinct.

a reply to: Cobaltic1978
Its important to note most in the industry do not expect a widely available vaccine for some years. I believe this Indian company is working primarily to treat immediately those in South America who are at most risk. A noble attempt to say the least.

A handful of smaller companies have also said they are working on Zika vaccines, some on more aggressive timelines. One team, a collaboration between Inovio Pharmaceuticals, the South Korean company GeneOne Life Science and academic researchers in Canada and the United States, has said its product could be ready for emergency use by this fall. Two other companies, Hawaii Biotech and the Protein Sciences Corp, also announced plans for a Zika vaccine.

Meanwhile, public health officials said government researchers were working on at least two approaches to a vaccine and hoped to begin testing one of them in early clinical trials by the end of this year. That approach is a DNA vaccine method, which creates virus-like particles when it is placed into cells. The method was tried in a vaccine for West Nile, a related virus, and was found to be safe in early trials, but never progressed because the National Institutes of Health couldn't find a company willing to develop it further, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH.

Researchers will try the same approach with Zika by inserting a Zika gene into the same platform, in place of the West Nile gene. "I do not anticipate that we will have any problem partnering with pharmaceutical companies now," he told reporters Thursday, referring to Zika.

Fauci added, however, "While these approaches are promising, it is important to understand that we will not have a widely available, safe and effective Zika vaccine this year and probably not even in the next few years."

a reply to: AmericanRealist

SIGN ME UP!!! I'll be their very first pin cushion, sounds great!!

NOT

a reply to: FamCore

Question, if my wife does not have any more babies, then is this virus even much of a threat? My my fear is the virus's voodoo head shrinking powers on developing fetuses.

This is rather unfortunate news, I was hoping Zika would end up being the zombie virus.
India killin my doom high )/:

I guess I can cross my fingers that one of their vaccines ends up being a catalyst.

a reply to: AmericanRealist

Zika, on its own, tends to be a relatively mild illness. Most people are asymptomatic, the rest have varying combinations of fever, rash, joint pain, whole body fatigue.

The CDC has a nice overview, but long story short, if you are not intending on being pregnant at the time of infection, you and the wife are fine.

Clean water?

You understand that India has two of the most polluted rivers in the world between the Ganges and the Yamuna, right?

a reply to: AmericanRealist

The method was tried in a vaccine for West Nile, a related virus, and was found to be safe in early trials, but never progressed because the National Institutes of Health couldn't find a company willing to develop it further

emphasis mine

That's the problem with the US Pharmaceutical-Industrial-Complex. If there's not an enormous amount of profit in a medication, they won't touch it.

-dex

a reply to: AmericanRealist

Not to mention, the developing countries that still live daily with the deadly diseases that 1st world countries have all but wiped out have a very different public attitude toward vaccination.

It is bad PR for companies in the US to make vaccines. You can thank the anti-vaxxers for that. No company wants to be perceived by the public at large as developing poison or be sued by every parent whose child develops autism or has some other reaction after being vaccinated.

So, yes, the risk-reward does not in the end prove to be worthwhile. At least with cancer drugs, most people still acknowledge that cancer is worse than the drugs that treat it.

So in part, we have created our own bed in this matter and now we get to lie in it.

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978
a reply to: intergalactic fire

Really? Extinct?

I would suggest there would be less Humans on the planet, but I'm not sure about extinct.

I mean ... they are one of the cause that so many people stay sick