China has become the first country to green light an inhaled Covid-19 vaccine, paving the way for the potential use of the needle-free product in the country, where reducing the spread of the disease remains a priority.
Vaccine maker CanSino Biologics said in a statement on Sunday that China’s drug regulator had approved the inhaled dose for emergency use as a booster.
The product, known as Invite Air , delivers a dose of vaccine via a puff of air from a nebulizer which is then inhaled through the mouth. CanSino’s Convidecia Covid-19 injected vaccine is already in use in China and has been approved in several other countries.
According to a database maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), CanSino’s new product is one of two specifically “inhaled” vaccines that have reached clinical stage development, as several companies around the world research innovative ways. to provide protection against Covid-19 through the nose and mouth.
The release of the inhaled immunizer comes as several Chinese cities impose large-scale Covid lockdowns and in addition to mass testing units in response to small-scale outbreaks.
The country continues to adhere to a strict zero Covid policy even as the rest of the world learns to live with the virus.
More than 70 Chinese cities have been placed under total or partial lockdown since late August, impacting more than 300 million people, according to a count by the CNN .
The low vaccination rate among the elderly is a medical reason used by Chinese authorities to justify ongoing disease control measures.
Meanwhile, new coronavirus variants have affected the protection offered by first-generation vaccines around the world, including vaccines from China that provide less robust antibody protection compared to mRNA vaccines developed in the West.
Booster and vaccination campaigns – and the development of state-of-the-art products – are underway in China.
It is not yet clear what place the new inhaled vaccine will fill in this scenario. CanSino warned in a company document that some regulatory steps remain before the vaccine can go to market and said its product will face “fierce competition” in the domestic market, where nine vaccines have received authorization so far.
In a press release, CanSino said that Convidecia Air “can induce strong humoral, cellular and mucosal immunity.”
The manufacturer did not provide data to support these claims, but referred to studies in the medical journal The Lancet.
In a study published in August, CanSino researchers reported that in people who received two injected doses of the Coronavac vaccine, a booster of the inhaled vaccine increased antibody levels compared to a third injected dose of Coronavac.
Coronavac, a vaccine developed by Beijing-based Sinovac widely used in China, Brazil and the world, uses a different type of technology from Convidecia, so the inhaled dose provided a heterologous boost.
The study did not test whether the inhaled dose prevented people from becoming infected or prevented them from transmitting Covid-19 to others.
Globally, drug manufacturers are racing to manufacture state-of-the-art vaccines that may improve disease protection, including those that use innovative dosing methods.
Clinical trials are underway to test more than a dozen spray vaccines to see if they can create so-called mucosal immunity. That increases certain antibodies in the nose and mouth specifically, with the aim of prevent an infection from setting in in the first place.
There is hope that these no-injection vaccines, which are given as drops, sprays, or pills in the mouth and nose, could also prevent the infection from spreading from person to person — something that injected vaccines don’t do very well after vaccination. emergence of new variants of the virus.
CanSino Convidecia vaccine is similar to Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines. It uses a harmless virus called an adenovirus to carry instructions from the coronavirus’s Spike protein into cells so the body can make antibodies against them.
None of CanSino’s products have been authorized for use in the United States, but the WHO earlier this year listed the injected version of Convidecia for emergency use.
Source: CNN Brasil
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