Vaccines to protect against Covid-19

Covid-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, affects people around the world. However, companies and research institutes develop vaccinations.

When can you expect a vaccine?

How quickly vaccination campaigns can be started depends not only on the speed of development, testing and approval of the vaccines, but also on production capacity. It is therefore not important which vaccine reaches approval first, but that as many vaccines as possible reach approval and can be manufactured using many production facilities.

Types of vaccines

The companies and research institutes are working towards different vaccines. Most of their projects target one of the following three types of vaccines:

Live vaccines with vector viruses: Well-known, harmless viruses serve as a starting point for several projects, for example the "Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara" (MVA), the adenovirus serotype 26 or the virus from measles vaccine. Such so-called vector viruses can multiply in humans without causing a disease. You also know how to multiply them in large quantities. Now they "disguise" researchers with genetic engineering as SARS-CoV-2 (specifically: they exchange one or more of their surface proteins with SARS-CoV-2 proteins) so that they can pretend that the immune system is infected with Covid-19. Whoever is vaccinated with it builds up immune protection that can also ward off a real infection - so the plan. Building on a vector virus are also the first approved Ebola vaccine, another Ebola vaccine (pending approval) and other experimental vaccines have been developed. This strategy is now pursued by Janssen,DZIF , University of Oxford and the ReiThera / Leukocare / Univercells consortium . Vaccine

with virus proteins : These vaccines either contain selected virus proteins (such as those from Novavax, Greffex, the University of Queensland and Sanofi / GSK); or they contain the entire material of inactivated SARS-CoV-2 viruses (for example at Beijing Institute of Biological Products / Sinopharm). They are essentially based on long-established technology: a large number of approved vaccines are composed in this way; for example those against hepatitis B or flu. With other vaccines, however, it may be easier to quickly produce large quantities of vaccine units. However, this will only become apparent when the time comes.

Gene based vaccines: These vaccines contain selected genes of the virus in the form of mRNA or DNA. After the injection, these are supposed to cause the formation of (harmless) virus proteins in the body, which in turn, like a conventional vaccine, cause the build-up of immune protection. Such mRNA and DNA-based vaccines have the advantage that many injection doses can be produced very quickly. However, no vaccine of this kind has yet been launched on the market. Companies and institutes that develop such vaccines against Covid-19 include CureVac, BioNTech, Moderna, Inovio, Arcturus Therapeutics, LineaRx / Takis , Anges, Translate Bio mit Sanofi and the ThaiNational Vaccine Institute with Chulalongkorn University ; the OpenCorona consortium, led by the Swedish Karolinska Institute and with the participation of the University of Gießen, is also developing a DNA-based vaccine.

At least 138 vaccine projects have been launched against SARS-CoV-2, which has only been known for around New Year : The World Health Organization currently has 124 (as of May 22, 2020). There are also at least 14 other projects that she has not yet listed. They are projects of the following companies and institutes:

Beximco Pharma(Bangladesh)introduces world’s first generic Remdesivir for COVID-19 treatment

the start-up Prime Vector Technologies (PVT) (Tübingen)

the start-up baseclick (Neuried near Munich)

the Viennese company Viravaxx and the University of Vienna

the Swiss company Alpha-O Peptides

the South Korean company SK Life Science

South Korean companies Genexine and Binex with other partners

the National Vaccine Institute with Chulalongkorn University (both in Thailand)

the Institutes for Biological Research (Israel)

the US company Sorrento Therapeutics

the Japanese company UMN Pharma (subsidiary of Shionogi) with its vaccine technology

the company Mynvax with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc)

the Shenzhen Geno-Immune Medical Institute (China) which is equal to two projects is active

the companies Biocon and Seagull (both India)