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Prof. Andrey Chorbanov
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Our preparation can act on different variants of the coronavirus, to get to the vial, you need a patent and a lot of money
The Bulgarian vaccine against COVID-19, which is being developed by a group of young scientists in the Experimental Immunology Laboratory of the Institute of Microbiology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Andrey Chorbanov, is already being tested on mice.
Rodents are vaccinated with the first prototype of the preparation, still clarifying the effect of lipid nanoparticles and how harmless the carrier is.
This was said for “24 hours” by Prof. Penka Petrova, director of the Institute of Microbiology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
The interest in vaccines at the institute is not from yesterday. More
in 2010
scientists
they win
project,
funded by the Research Fund. It’s called “DNA vaccines – targeting viral antigens through genetically engineered chimeric molecules.”
With the onset of the pandemic
the group itself
turns out with
know-how
how to develop a new vaccine with a different approach than the well-established ones that companies have started to produce.
The Bulgarian vaccine is protein. “It consists of short peptides packaged in lipid nanoparticles. Short peptides are part of the rosehip protein, but also of various other proteins in the envelope of the virus. Thus, the vaccine is multi-epitope, i. the immune system is trained to recognize different parts of the virus, so that even in emerging variants of the coronavirus, it can be recognized and destroyed by the human immune system, ”explains Prof. Petrova.
2 prototypes have been created. The first was funded by the Pasteur Institute last year with 70,000 euros. It was an 18-month project that is already coming to an end.
The second project started later. It is funded by the Research Fund with BGN 250,000. The project partners of the Institute of Microbiology are the Medical University of Sofia and the Faculty of Chemistry of Sofia University.
According to Prof. Penka Petrova, a ready-made vial for use, such as those currently used in the world, can be reached if a large pharmaceutical company shows interest in the Bulgarian preparation. The first step is to patent the idea and development. Prof. Penka Petrova expects this to be supported and funded by BAS. Only then should the offer to a pharmaceutical company actually come.
After buying the patent, you can go to clinical trials of phases 1, 2 and 3 on humans. After the first year, all effects are reported.
“They were in the world
developed
at least
250 successful
vaccines
Some of them stopped development and did not reach production because it will not be profitable or they do not have a very good degree of protection, “said the director of the Institute of Microbiology.
On October 5, Prof. Andrey Chorbanov will present the scientific development of the Bulgarian vaccine against COVID-19 in the final version of the World Congress of Vaccines.
For “24 hours” he explained that we have reached this stage with funding 50 or 100 times less than the competition
Prof. Chorbanov announced that he was working on a vaccine against the coronavirus in April last year.
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