Indian biotechnology firm Bharat Biotech based in southern Hyderabad city, said on Wednesday (February 3) it was working on two possible vaccines to fight the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil.
The virus is spreading rapidly in the Americas, and WHO officials on Tuesday (February 2) expressed concern that it could hit Africa and Asia as well. No vaccine has been developed so far.
Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Bharat Biotech International Limited, Dr. Krishna Ella, said it started work on the Zika virus a year ago while developing vaccines for chikungunya and dengue. Zika is closely related to dengue and is spread by the same species of mosquito.
“We have developed two vaccine candidates and we filed in July 2015, we filed a patent also. Probably this is the first global patent filed in 2015 July, nobody has filed before that,” said Ella.
One of the possible vaccines is “recombinant”, which means it is created by genetic engineering, while the other was “inactivated”, and will enter pre-clinical trials in animals in two weeks.
An inactivated vaccine is created by killing a pathogen in a way that its ability to replicate is destroyed, but the immune system can still recognise it.
Bharat Biotech’s announcement came a day after France’s Sanofi said it had launched a project to develop a Zika vaccine. On Wednesday, Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical also said it was investigating the possibilities of developing a vaccine for the disease.
Privately-held Bharat Biotech is likely to seek government help to fast-track regulatory clearances and the clinical trial process.
“See we are going to ask some government help. We don’t want any money from the government but we want the government to help us on the strategy and the regulatory issues and the clinical trial issues. If they can help us make it (Zika vaccination) faster,” said Ella.
Ella said that next month the animal safety and toxicology studies will begin for the vaccines followed by clinical trials.
Bharat Biotech sells its vaccines for polio, hepatitis B, H1N1 and rabies, among others, to more than 65 countries, according to its website.
No cases of the virus have been detected in India yet, but the health ministry on Tuesday issued guidelines on the disease, including an advisory that travel to affected countries be postponed or cancelled.
