India's first indigenous vaccine for COVID-19: In a piece of good news, India's first coronavirus vaccine-- COVAXIN-- developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has got green signal from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to conduct human clinical trials.
Amid the surging COVID-19 cases around the world, in a piece of good news, India's first coronavirus vaccine-- COVAXIN-- developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has got green signal from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to start with human clinical trials.
The vaccine is made in collaboration with ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) and NIV (National Institute of Virology).
The SARS-CoV-2 strain was isolated in NIV, Pune and was transferred to Bharat Biotech. The inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, developed at Bharat Biotech’s BSL-3 (Bio-Safety Level 3) high containment facility located in the Genome Valley, Hyderabad, has got approval to begin its Phase I and Phase II human clinical trials.
The permission was granted by The DGCI, CDSCO (Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation), and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare after the company submitted the results of pre-clinical studies related to safety and immune response.
These clinical trials are designed to test whether the vaccines are safe or not. The effectiveness of the vaccine will be tested in the next phases. Volunteers across India will be immunised with 'Made in India' COVID-19 vaccine in July 2020. However, the number of people and the date has not been mentioned yet.
Prime Minister Modi in 'Man ki Baat' stated that work is being done in the labs on Coronavirus vaccine and the world is keenly observing India and the country is hopeful too.
Bharat Biotech's Chairman and MD, Dr Krishna Ella stated that the company is proud to announce COVAXIN, India's first indigenous vaccine against COVID-19. The collaboration with ICMR and NIV was instrumental in the development of this vaccine. The company's Research and Development and Manufacturing teams have worked tirelessly to deploy the proprietary technologies towards this platform.
Bharat Biotech has a good track record when it comes to developing Vero cell culture platform technologies and has given successful vaccines for Polio, Rabies, Rotavirus, Japanese Encephalitis, Chikungunya and Zika.
Apart from this, 5 other Indian firms are working on COVID-19 vaccine. Around 120 vaccine programs in the world are underway. Pharma companies, researchers and scientists around the globe are working day and night to develop COVID-19 vaccine.
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