Specialists of the Chumakov Center, who developed CoviVac, a whole-virion vaccine, published their first research article about it. The work is published in the Emerging Microbes&Infections journal published by Taylor&Francis.
The article describes the findings of preclinical studies of the vaccine, which lasted more than a year. It is noted that CoviVak did not show toxicity and protected experimental Syrian hamsters, mice and common marmosets from severe pneumonia during intranasal infection with live coronavirus.
“In this work, we examined the effect of the whole-virion CoviVac vaccine inactivated with β-propiolactone, evaluated its safety, protective efficacy, immunogenicity, and stability of the immune response in rodents and primates. The vaccine showed no signs of acute / chronic, reproductive, embryonic, and fetal toxicity or teratogenic effects, and also did not show allergenic properties in the studied animal species,” the article says.
The scientists concluded that the drug provides a stable humoral immune response, with the production of IgG and NAb antibodies. The protective effectiveness of the vaccine was studied on Syrian hamsters. The reliability of the production process was demonstrated by the evaluation of four batches of the vaccine and comparing their immunogenic properties in mice.
The researchers had to check for a possible negative effect of the drug on pregnant women, so CoviVac was separately tested on pregnant mice. The vaccine had no effect on the intrauterine or postpartum development of the offspring.
The CoviVac vaccine is currently in phase 3 of clinical trials on humans, it has already been registered and is used for immunization of the population.