In a more promising news coming out of India, a Delhi-based biotechnology company, Panacea Biotec Limited signed a partnership with a US-based pharma company, Refana Inc to develop, manufacture and distribute an experimental COVID-19 vaccine which is currently in the works. The vaccine prototype, which will make use of an inactivated virus strain has shown effective results in the pre-clinical trials conducted in the US. Toxicology studies and animal trials will be conducted in labs across Delhi and Punjab, following which, the company aims to proceed to human trials in the month of October.
In a statement issued, Rajesh Jain, Panacea Biotec Limited’s manufacturing director said, “Over the next four weeks, we are going to develop this vaccine in our labs in Delhi and Punjab and after regulatory toxicology studies and animal pre-clinical studies, we hope to start the phase one human trials by October. By August, we will start the cGMP (current good manufacturing practices) process so that we can start trials in October and thereafter, scale-up for Phase 3 trials.”
The company is also hopeful of readying 40-45 million doses of the experimental vaccine by the end of December or January 2021. Apart from Panacea, there are seven other Indian companies in the league to find a vaccine for COVID-19.
