You must first culture the virus in the lab before rendering them harmless, by using either high temperature or chemicals. The inactivated viruses are then injected into the body.
You can see how they do this in institutions who have developed vaccines using inactivated virus.
Vaccine candidates from four Chinese companies have undergone clinical trials. One of these is the PiCoVacc or CoronaVac from Sinovac, currently in phase II trial.
You can choose to immediately develop inactivated vaccine, or take another look at alternative strategies.
Good news, Sinovac is already having a close partnership with Biofarma. You can continue through this partnership
No institution in Indonesia is yet willing to develop vaccine using this method. You need to look for alternatives or collaborate with Sinovac.
You will receive a vaccine candidate from Sinovac to be tested on people in Indonesia to see how well it goes. There is no guarantee the vaccine will actually work.
Airlangga University’s Institute of Tropical Diseases (ITD) cooperates with British-based Immunitor to develop oral vaccine using inactivated virus. They have, however, only completed a pre-clinical trial.
This may be a viable option for the long term. The question is, will you be granted the rights to produce the vaccine, or merely there as a collaborator in the research? The collaboration with Sinovac seems to be a viable strategic move for now.
What do you know, a journalist is calling. You know you have to answer it.
Is there a vaccine yet, professor? People are getting anxious!
How will you answer?
The vaccine is not here yet. You will have to say this loud and clear to raise awareness among the population.
Now you have to think for the longer term. You can
plan to develop your own vaccine
or import some and be done with it.
Importing may be the cheap way to go, but it won’t do any good to the progress of science in your country. Should there be another outbreak, you’ll be caught unprepared and ultimately forced to depend on another country to get through it, again.
But of course you can just not mind that or else plan to develop your own vaccine.
Great! Indonesia should be able to manufacture its own vaccine.
You can choose how to best achieve this goal.
To develop a vaccine, you can select between using the attenuated virus, inactivated virus, Protein, or genetic material method.
You did right by opt for collaboration. However, that may not be the case with your decision to develop vaccine using attenuated virus. No institution in Indonesia has said they’re ready to use this method.
Seek out other ways.
You did right by opt for collaboration. However, that may not be the case with your decision to develop vaccine using killed virus. No institution in Indonesia has said they’re ready to use this method.
Seek out other ways.
The Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology has the experienced in developing protein-based vaccines. This works by injecting a virus’ genetic material to bacteria so that the latter produces protein spikes, which are then harvested and turned into the vaccine. Biofarma is also capable of doing the same thing and produce in massive amount. This is your best option for now. However, you still have to solve one problem
Vaccines made with virus genetic material are a novelty. The Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology once attempted to make one to fight off malaria, but results were unsatisfactory. Up until now, there hasn’t been such a vaccine around. A success would mean doing the world a favor, while major financial blow awaits upon failure. Developing vaccine using this approach is not a wise decision.
Seek out other ways
.Congrats for finding the best strategy to develop your own vaccine.
You still have one little problem at hand. Your initial funding is a tiny USD 340,000. To put that in perspective, AstraZeneca and Oxford have USD 80 million for them, while Imperial College London gets USD 49.4 million. Even the new normal innovation competition has a much bigger fund of USD 11.2 million.
You now have to convince the president that vaccine research is, well, worth it.
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Copyright 2020. Kompas.com
