India’s Premas Biotech, to Develop Oral COVID-19 Vaccine

Oramed Pharmaceuticals and Gurgoan-based biotech Premas Biotech have announced the development of single dose oral COVID-19 vaccine.

Premas Biotech, an Indian firm has collaborated with Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. for the development of an oral COVID-19 vaccine candidate that has shown efficacy after a single dose.

A preliminary test in animals showed that the vaccine produced the desired antibodies. The product is far from being tested in human trials, though company promoters say depending on how tests pan out, the vaccine candidate could be ready for human trials in the next three months.

‘New protein-based VLP (Virus Like Particle) COVID-19 vaccine provides triple protection against three parts of the SARS CoV-2 virus i.e. Spike S, Membrane M, and Envelope E.’
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The nascent COVID-19 vaccine candidate is a “protein-based VLP (Virus Like Particle) vaccine candidate” that generates “triple protection” against the SARS CoV-2 virus, that is, it is able to target the spike, membrane, and envelope proteins of the coronavirus.

All the three proteins are vital to the structure of the coronavirus and give it form as well as the ability to replicate inside the body. Typically vaccines are supposed to coax the immune systems into producing antibodies neutralising these antigenic proteins.

Gastric juices would rapidly degrade any protective layers enclosing the antigen making the oral vaccine useless. Oravax claims to have solved that problem but how, is part of their proprietary secret sauce.

COVID-19 Vaccination in India: Issues and Challenges
India’s COVID-19 vaccination program has been launched. It currently uses the vaccines Covishield and Covaxin. There are some issues and challenges that need to be overcome in order to vaccinate all Indians.

“The vaccine candidate is also safe, efficacious and well-tolerated at normal to high doses, and generated high titres of neutralising antibodies. The VLP is manufactured using Premas’ proprietary D-Crypt™ platform, which is highly scalable and can be manufactured on large scales,” Oravax said in a statement.

Prabuddha Kundu, Co-founder and Managing Director, Premas Biotech, told The Hindu that an oral vaccine would significantly ease mass administration.

“It would be like taking a vitamin pill and what I can disclose now is that we are more than 100% sure that the technology works and is promising. In a month we should have a scientific publication reporting our results.”

So far India has only two vaccines publicly available for the pandemic though several others, employing a variety of approaches, are in different stages of clinical trials.

Source-Medindia