South Africa approves trial for oral coronavirus vaccine
- Oramed Pharmaceuticals’ subsidiary Oravax gets permission to start enrolling patients in Phase 1 of tests
- The company’s CEO said the oral form would ‘potentially enable people to administer the vaccine themselves at home’
The US-listed company has been given permission by the South African Health Regulatory Products Authority to start enrolling patients in Phase 1 of tests, it said in a statement on Friday. A similar trial is planned in Israel and a Phase 2 trial in the US, Nadav Kidron, Oramed’s chief executive officer, said in an interview.
“South Africa is the first place in the world we are running a clinical trial” for this vaccine, Kidron said.
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The oral form “would eliminate several barriers to rapid, wide-scale distribution, potentially enabling people to administer the vaccine themselves at home,” he said.
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While the tablets may need to be refrigerated, the hope is that the trials will show that the vaccine is stable at room temperature, he said.
Emergency-use approval in countries such as Mexico and Vietnam could be sought in the second half of next year, he said.
The tablets will be “way cheaper” than shots produced by Moderna and Pfizer and there will be savings as medical professionals won’t be needed to administer them, he said. Tablets also generally have less side effects than injections, Kidron added.