Can China win Covid-19 vaccine race with old school technology?
- Chinese teams are behind half of the world’s potential vaccines making fastest progress but their approach differs from the West.
- If testing hurdles can be overcome, inactivated vaccines may hold hope for beating coronavirus
Five out of 10 potential vaccines undergoing clinical trials have been developed by Chinese scientists, while a sixth is the result of a partnership between a Chinese company and a German biotech firm, according to the World Health Organisation.
But China is adopting a very different approach in its hunt for a vaccine against the disease caused by the new coronavirus. It is the only country pouring resources into the use of inactivated viruses, a technique used in vaccines against numerous diseases in the past – including hepatitis A, influenza and polio – but largely shunned in new vaccine development.
The technology is simple and involves growing a virus strain in the laboratory and then using heat or chemicals to destroy its ability to replicate. Once injected as a vaccine, the immune system recognises the antigens in the inactive virus and reacts by making antibodies.
Of the five vaccine candidates undergoing clinical trials in China, all but one involve inactivated viruses. There are a further 126 potential vaccines in preclinical evaluation around the world and, again, only five of these are based on the decades-old technique. Two are being developed by Chinese companies, with scientists in Japan, Kazakhstan and France working on the remainder.