As the world enters its fifth month of trying to contain and tame COVID-19 pandemic, reports of several potential COVID-19 vaccines have started to emerge thick and fast.
And now Italy's news agency ANSA claims a firm called Takis has developed world's first COVID-19 vaccine that has antibodies generated in mice that work on human cells.
The vaccine has been tested in Rome's Spallanzani Hospital, according to Italian news agency ANSA, even as Italy's total number of COVID-19 positive cases crossed the 213,000 mark, with over 85,000 recoveries but also claiming 29,000 lives.?
The report claims Luigi Aurisicchio, CEO of Takis, as stating that for the first time the candidate vaccine has neutralised the COVID-19 virus in human cells.?
Italian researchers are quietly hopeful on Takis' claim, remarking that the results are ¡°encouraging and well beyond expectations.¡±
As per CEO Luigi Aurisicchio's claim substantiated by the Spallanzani Hospital test, Takis is the first company in the world to successfully demonstrate the complete neutralisation of SARS-CoV-2 by a potential vaccine for human use.?
Explaining the process of antibody development, Luigi Aurisicchio said that the experimental mice developed antibodies that can block the virus from infecting human cells.??
He also added that this is the most advanced stage of testing for a candidate human vaccine developed entirely in Italy, and large scale human trials for which are expected after this summer.
Aurisicchio has also claimed that Takis is exploring a partnership with an American drug company, LineaRx, for further development of the vaccine formula and bringing it up to scale.
This is not the first COVID-19 neutralizing vaccine claim we have come across this week, since researchers in Israel also develop antibody that claims to do the same against COVID-19.
Of course, all of these potential 'cures' are giving us hope during a time of great personal and collective fear and anxiety, even as WHO warns that just like HIV and dengue, we may never have a 100% fullproof vaccine against COVID-19. Because the nature of viruses is such that it mutates, and there's evidence emerging that SARS-CoV-2 has mutated into a more contagious strain.?
India's very own Serum India Institute -- world's largest producer of vaccine doses -- is currently preparing to test ICMR-backed Oxford COVID-19 vaccine human trials, and hoping to have a COVID-19 vaccine for public use as early as September 2020.