One of the COVID-19 vaccine candidates being developed in India would enter the third phase of the pre-clinical human trial by Wednesday, the Union health ministry said.
Dr V.K. Paul, head of the national task force on COVID-19, said the vaccine which is entering the third phase has yielded encouraging results in the initial phases. He, however, did not reveal the name of the vaccine candidate.
Earlier, a national expert group on vaccine administration for COVID-19 had met the representatives of leading domestic manufactures to take inputs about the present stage of various candidate vaccines as well as their expectations from the government,
The panel met separately representatives of the five firms -- Serum Institute of India (Pune), Bharat Biotech (Hyderabad), Zydus Cadila (Ahmedabad), Gennova Biopharmaceuticals (Pune) and Biological E (Hyderabad).
The phase-1 human clinical trials of the two COVID-19 vaccine candidates developed indigenously by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Zydus Cadila Ltd have been completed and the trials have moved to phase 2, ICMR Director General Bhargava had said at a press briefing recently.
The Serum Institute of India, which has partnered with AstraZeneca for manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford, has been permitted for conducting Phases 2 and 3 human clinical trials of the candidate in India. It is likely to start the trials soon.
Biological E Ltd has entered into an agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, part of pharma major Johnson & Johnson, for creation and enhancement of production capabilities to manufacture the latter's COVID-19 vaccine.
In collaboration with HDT Biotech Corporation, USA, Gennova has developed an mRNA vaccine candidate (HGCO19), with demonstrated safety, immunogenicity, neutralisation antibody activity in rodent and non-human primate models. It is likely to go to clinical trial before the year-end.
With inputs from PTI
