‘Strong immune response’: Chinese Covid-19 vaccine team reports promising results
- Single dose of candidate medication yields antibodies in mice, researchers say
- Developers looking to partner with pharmaceutical company after a few more months of study
Researchers from Shanghai’s Fudan and Jiao Tong universities developed the candidate on the platform of messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA, which tells cells how to make proteins.
Scientists say that protein structures called spikes on the surface of the coronavirus allow the pathogen to bind to and invade human cells.
An mRNA vaccine is designed to mock an attack by these protein spikes and trigger an immune response to any future invaders carrying the same spikes.
In a study published on the preprint server bioRxiv on May 15, the researchers said they injected a single dose of the vaccine candidate, called ShaCoVacc, into mice and in two weeks observed a significant presence of the spike-specific antibody.
Two or three doses of inactivated vaccines were required to get a similar response in other studies.