Virologist Mariano Esteban says that his vaccine against COVID-19 “is not dead”
For months, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Mariano Esteban’s team was the most advanced of the Spanish projects, but now The request to start trials on people has been withdrawn, however, the virologist assures that this project “is not dead”.
Esteban, from the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), does not rule out that clinical trials may be done at some point And now his team is working on the basis of that prototype to create a new “modified and optimized” one, with greater capacity to neutralize the variants of the coronavirus that arise.
The scientist acknowledges, in an interview with Efe, that It may seem like an “inconsistency” that the request to the Spanish Medicines Agency (Aemps) has been withdrawn to start clinical trials, when the vaccine is ready and the results in animals have been good.
The vaccine “is still alive” and, therefore, from the CSIC and Biofabri (the company that has manufactured The lots for trials) “We are totally open” that these can be done. “Where? God will say”.
Esteban stresses that his preparation “has more than met the behavior required by regulatory agencies and the scientific community”.
In fact, on the 17th, just two days after the withdrawal of the request for clinical trials was reported, the team published a study in Frontiers of Immunology indicating that the vaccine “confers 100% protection against infection caused by SARS-CoV-2” in macaques.
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