COVID-19?pandemic has shut down nations, global trade, and forced people to stay locked indoors and follow social distancing protocols.?
As much as prevention and precaution remain our best defence against Coronavirus pandemic, there may be glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel in the form of two very promising vaccine candidates that undergo human trials in UK and Germany, respectively.?
Recently, reports revealed a vaccine in the UK would commence human trials starting tomorrow, and now a new report has revealed that Germany too has joined the list, getting clearance for one of its vaccines.
But what is the difference between these two vaccines and what new do they bring to the table in terms of fighting COVID-19? Let’s find out.
The vaccine that is going to commence testing in the UK has been developed by Oxford University’s researchers at the Jenner Insitute. The vaccine is called 'ChAdOX1'.
The vaccine in Germany is actually being developed by leading pharmaceutical company Pfizer along with BioNTech -- a leading biotechnology company from Germany. The vaccine is called BNT162.
Let’s first talk about the vaccine by Oxford researchers. The ChAdOX1 vaccine is an adenovirus vaccine vector developed at Oxford's Jenner Institute. Adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type, having been used safely in thousands of participants, from 1 week to 90 years of age, in vaccines targeting over 10 different diseases.
Basically the vaccine genetically engineers a virus to look like COVID-19 -- with the same spike proteins on the outside -- but without the ability to cause an infection.
If the vaccines can successfully simulate the spikes inside a human’s bloodstream, and trigger the immune system to create special antibodies to attack it, this could train the body to destroy the real coronavirus if they get infected with it in future.
The vaccine by Pfizer and BioNTech, on the other hand, is an RNA based vaccine. Here the RNA will help to initiate the production of proteins in the body similar to the virus. The proteins will then, in turn, trigger the immune response of the human body against the coronavirus.
For the vaccine developed by Oxford researchers, 510 people aged between 18 and 55 have been shortlisted out of a total group of 1,112 for the trial. The BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, on the other hand, are involving a slightly smaller set of 200 healthy participants between the age of 18 and 55 receive several variants of the vaccine.
While it is true that vaccine development can be a really time-consuming process, with rigorous testing and observation on side effects, both vaccine makers seem to be optimistic about their deadlines to bring their new silver bullets to the pandemic-fighting world.
In case of ‘ChAdOX1’, If all goes well with the human trial stage of this Oxford University coronavirus vaccine, the research team is extremely hopeful of aggressively meeting their own internal deadline of having this certified and mass-produced for everyone to use by September of this year.?
BioNTech and Pfizer’s BNT162, on the other hand, haven’t really revealed an estimated date of arrival for its vaccine. Moreover, this is also awaiting clearance for testing in the US. We can expect the vaccine to arrive as early as next year.?