The Vaccine of COVID-19: World Perspective and Footstep of Bangladesh

All the world is now running behind the vaccine of COVID 19. In this race, more than 200 companies are involved to find an effective vaccine. As the virus is spreading very rapidly, it is an urgent need to control this deadly virus. Bangladesh is now the hotspot of corona according to the daily affected rate. The number of new cases is increasing alarmingly.

An effective vaccine is more crucial to control the virus and develop herd immunity as well. According to WHO, 18 candidate vaccines for COVID-19 are now in clinical evaluation and 129 candidate vaccines are now in pre-clinical evaluation. The reports published on 02 July 2020.

APPROACHES INVOLVED IN VACCINE DEVELOPMENT

There are multiple approaches involved in vaccine development. Scientists are using different strategies for developing the vaccine. The traditional approaches involved to grow the viruses in large volume and then inactivated them or by culturing viruses over time to make them weaken until they are safe. Now scientists are trying to make gene-based vaccine for COVID-19.

 

Instead of directly delivering bits of the virus to the immune system for target practice, gene-based vaccines give the body tools to make them on its own. The vaccines are made up of pieces of genetic material, either mRNA or DNA, that encode the instructions for making the protein. The mRNA or DNA then enters cells, which read the instructions and churn out copies of the protein for the immune system to rally against.

But in COVID-19, scientists are trying to develop a vaccine using  the genetic code of the spike protein of covid virus. When the vaccine is injected into the body, muscle cells naturally "amplify" it by producing copies of the spike protein which the immune system detects as a threat. This trains the body’s immune system to defend against SARS-CoV-2 through being able to recognise the spike protein if it encounters it again.

Genetic code of the viruses is important to prepare such a vaccine. Scientists in China shared the genetic code by sequencing the virus within a week after the first confirmed case in China which later help the whole world to research and develop a vaccine.

This way of developing a vaccine for human is very new. If scientists get success, then this would be the first gene based vaccine for human.    

ADVANTAGES OF USING RNA IN VACCINE DEVELOPMENT

 

Using RNA allows to be fast because the genetic sequence can be made synthetically in the lab, and because it can self-amplify, this needs only a very low dose of the vaccine for it to be effective – which can make the equivalent of a million doses in one litre of reaction material. This allows to scale up very quickly and it is feasible to be making 10s of millions of doses per week. Adding more vaccine platforms working in parallel will only increase production capacity further.

NATURAL IMMUNE RESPONSE OF COVID-19 RECOVERED PATIENT

This is a novel virus and some mysterious things happened related to this virus. Among them, one of the strange thing is the natural immune response of affected cases. After complete recovery, there are found a very unstable immunity against the viruses. The immune response is very short-lived. Scientists failed to explain the exact reason rather to state that the lower level of infection and localized (only respiratory organ involved) infections could be the reasons. The more virus in the body develop more immunity.

IMMUNITY THROUGH VACCINATION

Normally vaccination provides better immunity than natural immunity. For a vaccine to be highly effective, it should prevent infection in over 80% of vaccinated people and give them immunity for a minimum of a year (which would allow for annual boosting) but ideally longer.

The success of a vaccine lies mainly in immune response developed after injecting in the body. If the vaccine failed to develop stable immunity, it will not be recommended for use. Before final approval there's should be enough evidence which prove undoubtedly the effectiveness of it. 

Gene based vaccine found well working in case of animal like mice but still in case of human this type of effort could not bring enough good results. These vaccines aren’t good enough at spurring the immune system to create antibodies.

EFFORT FROM BANGLADESH

Globe Biotech in Bangladesh recently announced that they develop a vaccine for COVID 19 and found positive results in animal trials. Firstly I congratulate them on taking the initiative from Bangladesh (If it is truly done what they said and if there's no intention of seeking media attention). 

All are running behind the vaccine and who will be succeeded only Allah knows. More than 200 trials are running throughout this world. Some effort will be succeeded, some will be failed. In this state, your effort from Bangladesh is highly appreciable. I respect to your courage for taking a vaccine development project.

We all appreciate the effort you made and best wishes to the team for the ultimate success. However, what you have shown is not enough in the process of vaccine development specially to disclose to mass media. According to your results, this is very preliminary stage of vaccine development. Animal trial and human trial results vary a great in gene based vaccine. The number of trial animal is also a factor. The animal number should be increased in your trial. Only immune response is not enough, duration of immune response is important. Before going for clinical trails, enough data need to be shown of animal trails. Still it has not done so far I know from your interview.

It's a long process. don't be too hurry. No one knows when the world will find an effective vaccine. We are ready to wait. Don't go for media frequently. Please concentrate to the work. Please don't need to hear people what they are saying both positive and negative about your work. Just let it go. 

Normally research is neglected and discouraged for many reasons in Bangladesh. Here allocated national budget for research is lower than the budget of a university abroad. However  renowned Bangladeshi researchers are working in most of developed countries like USA, Japan, Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, China. Fortunately, some of them are engaged in developing vaccine in abroad as well. This is the first step from Bangladesh. We all should show positive response to this effort. May this effort go a long way, make history, make Bangladesh proud. Let's pray for them. Best wishes to the team.  

Nuronnabi Sagor