TEL AVIV – A breakthrough coronavirus vaccine developed by Israeli scientists will likely be ready for testing within “a few weeks,” though it will not be accessible to the public for another few months because of a lengthy bureaucracy and clinical testing process, one researcher told the Times of Israel Tuesday.
The oral vaccine could “turn this disease into a very mild cold,” Chen Katz from the Galilee Research Institute Migal told the Times, adding that vaccinated individuals who become infected by COVID-19 would likely not be affected at all.
“The opportunity is amazing here,” he said. “Everyone wants to know we can contribute something to humanity and when we found we had the right tools to do it this became is very exciting.”
Scientists at the institute had a head start on developing the inoculation, having spent the past four years developing a vaccine protect poultry from the avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a virus strain similar to the novel coronavirus currently plaguing the world.
Scientists sequenced the DNA of both the poultry and human coronaviruses and found they shared genetic similarities.
Last week, Israel’s science ministry lauded the progress made by the institute.
“Given the urgent global need for a human coronavirus vaccine, we are doing everything we can to accelerate development,” Migal CEO David Zigdon said at the time.
Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis said that once the vaccine was ready in a few weeks, his ministry would do everything to fast-track clinical trials and have it safety approved for the human market in as little as 90 days.
However, according to Wednesday’s report, the Health Ministry has warned against placing “false hopes” in the vaccine.
Katz, who serves as the director of Migal’s biotechnology group, said the vaccine will be formulated with a specially produced protein.
“We are developing the proteins that are needed for our technology of the oral vaccination. They are special proteins which, when sprayed in to the mouth, penetrate the epithelial cells inside the mouth and activate a mucosal immune response, which is the part of the immune response in our body that protects the entry point of the virus,” he told the newspaper.
“By the time the protein is ready, we hope to have found the right partner who can take us through the clinical stage. The clinical testing experiments themselves are not so long, and we can complete them in 30 days, plus another 30 days for human trials. Most of the time is bureaucracy — regulation and paperwork,” he said.
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