Clinical trials show ChulaCov19 vaccine boosts immunity against Covid and variants
Clinical trials for the Thai “ChulaCov19” mRNA vaccine have been a success as healthy volunteers to whom it was administered are found to have good immunity after they have been vaccinated.
Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thai Red Cross Society, and the Vaccine Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University held a press conference to report on the progress of the locally made vaccine.
The volunteers’ antibodies have been greatly boosted to prevent the original strain of the virus, and four other variants, namely Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, they said. Manufacturing and preparation for registration to be used in an emergency are underway.
Professor Suttipong Wacharasindhu, director of Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, the Thai Red Cross Society, and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University said: “It is gratifying that the development of ChulaCov19 vaccine is advancing as planned and gaining the public’s confidence in the safety of the testing process.”
ChulaCov19 vaccine was designed and developed by a team of Thai researchers working in collaboration with Pennsylvania University’s Professor Drew Weissman, a physician-scientist who too wants to make the mRNA vaccine technology more accessible to people, especially in countries with moderate and low incomes.
The good news from the Phase 1 clinical trial is that the subjects, after having received the second injection for seven days, showed mild to moderate side-effects, localised pain in the injected arm, fatigue, fever, and chills, but the symptoms improved within one to three days on average. Also, it was found that ChulaCov19 could boost high antibodies immunity against the original strain of the virus, Suttipong said.
In addition, the vaccine can inhibit all four mutated strains: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta by more than 80 per cent, while boosting T-cell immunity which helps to eliminate and control the pathogen in the cells of infected people as well, he added.
Vaccine temperature endurance tests showed that ChulaCov19 could be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius refrigeration for as long as three months and can also be kept at room temperature of 25 degrees Celsius for two weeks. This makes the vaccine much easier to store than other types of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.
