China’s CanSino Biologics will begin clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine that is given by inhalation next week, the company’s co-founder and CEO Xuefeng Yu told CNBC on Sunday.
The efficacy rates of Covid vaccines in China have been lower than those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Earlier this month, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control publicly acknowledged that Chinese vaccines “do not have very high protection rates” and that they were considering giving people different shots of Covid to increase the effectiveness of vaccine.
Yu told CNBC that an inhalation vaccine could be more effective than injected ones, as the coronavirus enters the human body through the airways.
CanSinoBIO is jointly developing the inhalation vaccine with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. To be clear, the company’s Adenovirus Type 5 Vector (or Ad5-nCoV) injection-administered vaccine was already approved for use in China and several other countries.
People who were shot Covid-19 at a temporary vaccination site on April 15, 2021 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.
Liu Ranyang | China News Service Getty Images
Speaking to CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan Province, Yu explained that theoretically, an inhaled vaccine could provide additional protection by activating antibodies or T cells (white blood cells that are vital to the immune system). ) in the respiratory tract.
If this protective layer fails and the virus travels deeper into the body, other parts of the immune system could still fight the Covid virus, Yu added.
“So add more layers: it makes sense, right? That’s why we’re on the mucosal pathway,” he said.
The CEO said the company has used the same concept to develop an inhalation vaccine against TB or tuberculosis. Tests in Canada showed that the inhalation dose of the TB vaccine needed to provide protection is “much, much lower than the actual injection,” he said.
Enhance the effectiveness of the vaccine
The single-dose injectable Covid vaccine from CanSinoBIO has been approved for use in several countries, including China, Pakistan, Mexico and Hungary.
The company said provisional data from phase 3 overseas clinical trials showed that its vaccine was 68.83% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 disease two weeks after an injection, while that the rate fell to 65.28% after four weeks, according to Reuters.
In comparison, the updated data showed that the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was 91% effective in preventing infection, while Moderna said its vaccine was more than 90% effective six months after the second shot.
Yu said CanSinoBIO has considered adding a booster shot six months after the first injection, which managed to improve the immune response to the coronavirus.
“This also indicates that we can increase our vaccine, whether it’s mixed with others or make it our own. I think it really needs a scientific study. We need to have data to show how it could be better,” the CEO said. .
Reuters reported Monday that Chinese researchers are testing the Covid vaccine blend developed by CanSinoBIO and a Chongqing Zhifei organic products unit. The trial, which is underway in the eastern city of Nanjing, is expected to include 120 participants, according to the report.
China was the first country to report cases of Covid-19 in late 2019 and appears to have largely contained the outbreak. The country has said it intends to vaccinate 40% of its population in June.