A team of scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has published a study that talks about a new experimental coronavirus vaccine.
In a recent study, two doses of the vaccine induced robust immune responses and were able to rapidly block the coronavirus in the upper and lower airways of rhesus monkeys exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccine-candidate, dubbed mRNA-1273, was developed by scientists at the NIAID Vaccine Research Center and Moderna (Cambridge). The new study has two groups of eight macaque-Rhesus received two injections of 10 or 100 μg of mRNA-1273, and the third, control, saline solution in the same doses.
Injections were given at intervals of 28 days. The vaccinated macaques produced high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the surface spike protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to attach and enter cells.
Interestingly, macaques given a dose of 10 mcg or 100 mcg produced neutralizing antibodies in their blood at levels significantly higher than those found in people who recovered from COVID-19. — write specialists.
Four weeks after the second injection, all macaques were exposed to SARS-CoV-2, causing them to contract the coronavirus. Notably, two days later, no virus was detected in the lungs of seven of the eight vaccinated monkeys.
And in animals from the control group, which received saline, the virus actively multiplied in the lungs.
There should be no rush with vaccines. If we say that some vaccine has been tested, we must understand that these are not clinical trials yet. And it may take a long time before they start. We must carefully check what we are going to administer to healthy people, because a vaccine is not a medicine, but a protection that should not harm, – explained to “Reedus” Vitaly Zverev, scientific director of the Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums. I. I. Mechnikov.
However, the Cambridge vaccine was the first successful experimental COVID-19 vaccine tested in non-human primates. She showed rapid viral control in the upper respiratory tract, the researchers note.
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