Indigenous Indian COVID19 vaccines in the global race to end the pandemic
Who Invented the Vaccine?
COVAXIN by Bharat Biotech
ZyCov-D Vaccine by Zydus Cadila
Where is it?
The Drug Controller General of India CDSCO (The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation) permitted to conduct trials on humans, marks the beginning of the end.
Potential of Pharma in India:
India has emerged as one of the significant vaccine manufacturing hubs. Indian manufacturers account for 60% of vaccine supplies made to UNICEF. The vaccine for novel coronavirus may be developed anywhere in the world, but without Indian manufacturers involved the production of required quantities is not going to be feasible.
Vaccine race:
More than 140 candidate vaccines are under various stages of development in and around the world. Parallelly Indian institutions have also engaged in R&D for the development of vaccines in India. With the primary scientific inputs coming from institutions like Pune based ICMR institution National Institute of Virology and Hyderabad based CSIR institution Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, six Indian companies are working on a vaccine for COVID-19.
Immune system Mechanism:
Antigen from the pathogen and antibodies produced by the human immune cells can be thought of as matching the compatible pair. Every pathogen has specific molecular structures called an antigen.
Once infected by the germ, the human immune system develops antibodies that match the antigen.
Immune System memory and vaccine:
Once the new antibody matching the antigen evolves, it is retained in the immunological memory. Next time the same pathogen invades, immunological memory gets activated. The infection is nipped in the bud. We acquire immunity.
A vaccine is a method of artificially inducing immunological memory. There are many ways in which one can artificially stroke the immune system to develop antibodies and memory. The bottom line is presenting the antigens of the novel coronavirus to the human immune system.
How do these vaccines work?
We can inactivate a whole virus with heat or formaldehyde, yet keep the antigen molecular structures still intact. Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN uses the virus isolated from an Indian patient by the National Institute of Virology to develop the inactivated virus vaccine.
Novel coronavirus infects the human cells with the help of its spike proteins. Thus the antigen on the spike protein is a crucial vaccine target. If the antibody blocks the spike protein, then the virus cannot bind the cell and multiply.
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