Both institutions are developing the joint Sovereign Plus Turin clinical study, aimed at verifying the efficacy of the Cuban preparation as a universal booster dose in people immunized with others authorized in Italy, or in convalescents from the disease.
Some thirty volunteers vaccinated with injectables produced by Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson and Johnson traveled to the Cuban capital in November 2021, where they received the planned dose of Soberana Plus, after providing blood samples for analysis on the island.
A similar procedure was performed 28 days later at the Microbiology and Virology Laboratory of the Amedeo di Savoia Hospital, with a view to comparing data obtained independently.
The results have been very satisfactory and align the protective qualities of this vaccine with respect to the others that have been the object of attention throughout this period, Professor Giovanni Di Perri, head of the hospital’s Department of Infectious Diseases, told Prensa Latina.
A big yes to Cuba’s vaccine (+Video + Audio)
Everyone knows the famous Finlay Institute in Havana, “one of the first to get moving and produce a form of vaccine that is easily replicable and reproducible in industrial quantities,” said the doctor, considering it a privilege to collaborate with his colleagues on the island in a specific sector of virology.
An important characteristic to be valued in the Cuban vaccine is that it has concentrated on a particular infrastructure of the surface protein that responds to the name of Receptor BindingDomain (RBD), he pointed out.
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Di Perri highlighted the significance of this first joint investigation between Amedeo di Savoia and the Finlay Institute, even, he specified, “from the human point of view, due to the attitudinal affinity we have with Cuban colleagues.”
For her part, Dr. Valeria Ghisetti, director of the Microbiology and Virology Laboratory, explained that “we carried out a verification of the efficacy of Soberana Plus as a reinforcement against the Delta variant and now we are analyzing the titration of the antibodies induced against other variants of SARS CoV-2”.
We obtained optimal results in the sense that, as is known, the booster is extremely important in the immune response against Covid-19, for which the scheme consists of two basic doses and a third, he said.
Soberana Plus, he noted, has induced the production of antibodies in a significant percentage of subjects who, regardless of the original scheme, had not produced them after receiving the two basic doses.
Ghisetti, who described the collaborative activity as very close and heartfelt, said that the preliminary results are definitely satisfactory, positive and very encouraging.
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It is a vaccine, he indicated, of traditional manufacture, with some interesting components on the degree of coverage of the “spike” protein of the virus, so there are elements to think that the efficacy with respect to Omicron is also good.
Another participant in the study is Professor Andrea Calcagno, who was previously in contact with the Cuban health collaborators of the Henry Reeve Contingent who helped fight Covid-19 in Turin, with whom he had “a very interesting human collaboration.”
Through his Antillean colleagues, the researcher learned about the participation of members of the Contingent in other situations such as the fight against the Ebola virus and the operation of the national health system in Cuba.
Then the collaboration with the Finlay Institute began and the truth is that I did not know that there was such a developed institute in vaccines in Cuba and it really was a surprise, he recalled.
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The truth, Calcagno added, is that we do not work with vaccines, we work with antibiotics, antivirals, we focus more on the cure than on prevention, so it has been very important for me to learn things and see what can be developed with a lot of enthusiasm, interest and investments.
For the researcher, a country that has been able to develop three vaccines, with two other projects in development, reflects “a very important collective effort, developed very well, to overcome the emergency and also investigate the future in Cuba and thinking about other countries that they may need that. I see it as very exceptional”.
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