China’s CanSino Biologics will begin clinical trials next week for an inhaled Covid-19 vaccine, Xuefeng Yu, co-founder and CEO of the company, told CNBC on Sunday.
The efficacy rates for China’s Covid vaccines have been found to be lower than those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Earlier this month, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control publicly acknowledged that Chinese vaccines ‘do not have very high protection rates’ and that they are considering giving different Covid shots to increase the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Yu told CNBC that an inhaled vaccine may be more effective than those injected as the coronavirus enters the human body through the airways.
CanSinoBIO is jointly developing the inhalation vaccine with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. To be clear, the company’s Adenovirus Type 5 Vector vaccine – or Ad5-nCoV – was administered by injection, already approved for use in China and several other countries.
People who received Covid-19 shots at a temporary vaccination site on April 15, 2021 in Kunming, Yunnan Province.
Liu Ranyang | China News Service | Getty Images
Yu told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan’s Chinese province that theoretically an inhaled vaccine could provide additional protection by activating antibodies or T cells – white blood cells that are vital for the immune system. airways.
If the protective layer fails and the virus penetrates deeper into the body, other parts of the immune system can still fight the Covid virus, Yu added.
“So you’re adding more layers – that makes sense, doesn’t it? That’s why we go through the mucus,” he said.
The CEO said the company used the same concept to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis or tuberculosis. Trials conducted in Canada have shown that the inhaled dose of the TB vaccine needed to provide protection is “much, much less than the actual injection,” he said.
Increase the effectiveness of the vaccine
CanSinoBIO’s single dose Covid vaccine has been approved for use in several countries including China, Pakistan, Mexico and Hungary.
The company said that interim data from third-phase clinical trials abroad showed that the vaccine was 68.83% effective in preventing the symptomatic Covid-19 disease two weeks after one injection, while the rate after four weeks to 65.28%, Reuters reported.
By comparison, updated data showed that the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was 91% effective in preventing infection, while Moderna said the vaccine was more than 90% effective six months after the second shot.
Yu said CanSinoBIO added a booster shot six months after the first injection to improve the immune response to the coronavirus.
“It also suggests that our vaccine can be boosted, whether it’s mixed with others or we do our own, I think it should really be a scientific study. We should actually have information to show which way can be better. be, ‘said the CEO.
Reuters reported on Monday that Chinese researchers are mixing Covid vaccines developed by CanSinoBIO and a unit of Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products. The trial, which is taking place in the eastern city of Nanjing, is expected to involve 120 participants, the report said.
China was the first country to report cases of Covid-19 at the end of 2019 and apparently contained the outbreak largely. The country said it intends to vaccinate 40% of the population by June.