ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
[i][color=blue][size=5]India’s DNA COVID vaccine is a world first –
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
India has approved a new COVID-19 vaccine
that uses circular strands of DNA
to prime the immune system against
the virus SARS-CoV-2.
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
ZyCoV-D, which is administered into the skin without an injection
has been found to be 67% protective against symptomatic COVID-19
in clinical trials, and will probably start to be administered in
India this month.
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
Peter Richmond, a paediatric immunologist at the
University of Western Australia in Perth.
“This is a really important step forward in the fight to defeat COVID-19 globally,
because it demonstrates that we have another class of vaccines
that we can use.” :
[color=green]It is proof of the principle that DNA vaccines
work and can help in controlling the pandemic
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
“If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology”
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
RNA vaccines were quicker to show strong immune responses in clinical trials
delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
But DNA vaccines have a number of benefits , because they are easy to produce
and the finished products are more stable than mRNA vaccines
which typically require storage at very low temperatures.
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
ZyCoV-D contains circular strands of DNA known as plasmids,
which encode the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, together with
a promoter sequence for turning the gene on.
Once the plasmids enter the nuclei of cells, they are converted into mRNA
which travels to the main body of the cell, the cytoplasm
and is translated into the spike protein itself.
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
The body’s immune system then mounts a response against the protein
and produces tailored immune cells that can clear future infections.
Plasmids typically degrade within weeks to months
but the immunity remains.
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
Both DNA and mRNA vaccines
have been under development since the 1990s
The challenge for DNA vaccines is that they need to make it
all the way to the cell nucleus, unlike mRNA vaccines
which just need to get to the cytoplasm,
ketchim
Captain
Joined Apr 2008
Posts 89,928
ZyCoV-D is deposited under the skin
as opposed to deep in muscle tissue.
The area under the skin is rich in immune cells
that gobble up foreign objects, such as vaccine particles
and process them.