the american lab Modern reported this Wednesday that it will begin, in Argentina, the clinical trial of a anti-flu vaccine (mRNA1010) with a messenger RNA platform, the same one that the pharmaceutical company used for the coronavirus vaccine.
With the application of mRNA technology, the company aims to achieve a faster adaptation to strains annual flu reports that are constantly changing.
According to the laboratory authorities, the phase III clinical trial will include 6,000 volunteers around the world, 4,000 of whom will be recruited in Argentina, in the cities of Buenos Aires (Mautalen Salud and the Central Military Hospital), Córdoba (Allende Sanitarium), Tucumán and Rosario.
how is the test
In the country, recruitment began in mid-June and will run until the end of August. People who wish to volunteer for this study must meet two requirements: be older than 18 and not having received a flu shot in the 6 months prior to the trial.
The pharmaceutical company also established that the 20% of volunteers must be over 65 years old, since the main target population of the flu vaccine is people in that age range.
It will be a randomized, stratified trial –half will receive the Moderna product and the other half, one that already exists on the market–, blinded and with active control for evaluate the immunogenicity and safety against seasonal influenza.
Fase I y II
The mRNA1010 vaccine has already been tested in phase I/II. According to the data of the provisional analysis of these phasesno significant safety issues were observed at any level or serious adverse events.
It was also found that participants achieved a substantial increase in antibodies against H1N1 and H3N2the strains responsible for the vast majority of influenza morbidity and mortality in adults.
Phase III of the trial, the company reported, will be carried out in Argentina, Panama, Colombia and Australia.
messenger RNA
As explained by the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) on its website, messenger RNA vaccines, also known as mRNA vaccines, are “a new type of vaccines that protect against infectious diseases”.
To arouse the immune response, says the CDC, “the system of many vaccines is to inject the attenuated or inactivated germ into our bodies. This is not the case with mRNA vaccines. Insteadthese vaccines teach our cells to produce a protein, or even a portion of a protein, that triggers an immune response within our body”.
That immune response that produces antibodies “is the one that protects us from infections if the real virus enters our organisms,” the entity details.
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