South Africa approves trial for oral coronavirus vaccine

Name: SCMP Explains: What’s in a Covid-19 vaccine?
Uploaded: 2021-10-29T15:49:51.000Z
Duration: 6 min 18 s
Description: SCMP Explains: What’s in a Covid-19 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’

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An elderly patient receives a dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Johannesburg, South Africa. File photo: AP

Bloomberg

Published: 11:49pm, 29 Oct 2021Updated: 5:00am, 30 Oct 2021

Oramed Pharmaceuticals won approval to run an initial clinical trial for its orally delivered Covid-19 vaccine candidate in South Africa.

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.

While South Africa has hosted a number of Covid-19 vaccine trials, this would be the first of an oral treatment. Delivery by mouth would surmount some hurdles confronting Africa, such as the need to keep injectable shots refrigerated, sometimes at ultra-low temperatures, in the effort to improve inoculation in the least-vaccinated continent.

“South Africa is the first place in the world we are running a clinical trial” for this vaccine, Kidron said.

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SCMP Explains: What’s in a Covid-19 vaccine?

The dose produced by Oramed’s subsidiary, Oravax, uses a “virus-like particle” to target three of Covid-19’s surface proteins, including those less susceptible to mutation. That, the company said, could make it more effective against future variants of the coronavirus.