They develop a vaccine against the coronavirus, influenza and bronchiolitis | Rehearsals in Argentina would begin in November

The impact of the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 It is showing its results with the drop in the average number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, but the coronavirus will remain circulating. Therefore, Argentina began the investigation to generate a trivalent vaccine intended for the elderly containing components against Covid-19, flu and bronchiolitis. The dose will be created with the model of new technologies known as Messenger RNA or recombinant proteins.

“The trivalent vaccine will exist and that is what we are aiming for with this series of trials,” confirmed the Head of Research and Teaching of the Maternal and Child Department of the Central Military Hospital, Gonzalo Pérez Marc, who leads the start of clinical trials of a new inoculant against the respiratory syncytial virus that causes bronchiolitis, which will mean the first part of the study.

Pérez Marc and his team –among whom is the infectologist Fernando Polack– have been playing a central role in the research of vaccines against the coronavirus. On the one hand, they were the research center that recruited the most people in phase 3 of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and, in effect, led the publication with the results in the journal The New England Journal of Medicine.

The new challenge is to start with a series of clinical trials that, in principle, separately test innovative vaccines against respiratory syncytium and influenza, which is currently in a regulatory stage and, if approved by the National Administration of Drugs, Food and Medical Technology (Anmat) it would start in November.

Pérez Marc compared the investigation that will begin with “the triple viral that is applied to children” and stressed that the relevance of the vaccine has to do with the aging of the population worldwide, that puts more people at risk of respiratory diseases.

The boss highlighted, in dialogue with the agency Telam, that new doses will first be investigated against bronchiolitis – this will be the one that will begin to be studied in November – and influenza on Messenger RNA technology or recombinant proteins, something that already occurs with most of the doses that are applied for Covid-19, although it is still an investigational technology. These technologies differ from traditional attenuated virus-mounted vaccines, such as the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.

“These technologies have the advantage that they can adapt very quickly to different viruses and variants,” said Pérez Marc. When asked how clinical trials with a large part of the vaccinated population will be approached, the head of Research at the Military Hospital Central explained: “The new vaccine studies against Covid-19 have to point to being what is called a vaccine of booster or booster but in no way can a vaccine of new, that is to say, that it includes an unvaccinated population “.

“At the same time, it is important that vaccines continue to be developed, because it is being evaluated the possibility that in the years that follow, people will have to be vaccinated every year, billions of doses are needed; then the best thing is to have many companies so that there is no shortage “, he valued.

– .