Coronavirus cure: Biotech companies and researchers in a race to find COVID-19 treatment

For now, some remedies are introduced by the bio-tech companies to cure Coronavirus

By Bhaswati Guha Majumder
March 17, 2020 16:23 +08

Universal Music CEO tested positive for COVID-19

With the mounting deaths from the deadly coronavirus, several biotech companies and researchers are rushing to labs to find a vaccine for the asymptomatic virus that has killed 7,154 as of now and infected 182,406 people globally.

On Monday, March 16, a new phase 1 clinical trial of a potential vaccine, mRNA-1273, for the Novel Coronavirus has started, as the first person to enroll in the trial has already received the vaccine. But how effective it would be -- decides the success rate.

Expert's opinion on Coronavirus cure

A virologist at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, Benjamin Neuman, said that there has never been an extremely successful human vaccine against any members of the Coronavirus family and to create a new cure against the COVID-19 will take longer period.

The co-director of the Centre for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, Dr Peter Hotez, testified before the US House Science, Space and Technology Committee and said, "We had the vaccine ready to go" in 2016 but that time nobody cared or found anything interesting about the Coronavirus vaccine, so it never reached the clinical trial stage.

Influenza — Coronavirus (Representational picture) Reuters

He mentioned that now they again try to get the funding for the vaccine research but now "we will have the lag." As per Dr Hotez, the COVID-19 vaccine trials will take time.

Can Israel introduce the first accurate vaccine for COVID-19?

Earlier, it was reported that Institute for Biological Research (IBR) in Israel, is trying to develop a vaccine and was in the final process of developing it. Israel's Minister of Science and Technology Ofir Akunis then stated that the coronavirus vaccine would be ready in just three weeks and will be available within 90 days.

But later, the Defence Ministry of Israel said that "there has been no breakthrough in the efforts of the biological institute to find a vaccine for the Coronavirus or to develop testing kits. The institute's work is conducted according to an orderly work plan and it will take time. If and when there will be something to report, it will be done in an orderly fashion."

Companies in the race

Among all the drugs claimed to work against the Coronavirus, remdesivir, developed by Gilead sciences could be the closest to commercial launch. The drug has shown early promise in treating some Chinese COVID-19 patients, as per the doctors. In a press conference in China, Bruce Aylward, a WHO official said, "There's only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy. And that's remdesivir."
The first testing in humans of an experimental vaccine created by Moderna for the COVID-19 has begun on Monday, March 16. The goal of this first set of tests is to find out if the vaccine is safe and to determine how well it works.
While Canada has recorded 439 cases of Novel Coronavirus and decided to close its borders to all foreign nationals except US citizens and permanent residents to limit the spread of the virus, a company called Medicago, which is a biopharmaceutical company in Quebec City funded by the Pentagon, recently mentioned that they have created a COVID-19 vaccine just 20 days after the firm received the Coronavirus' genetic sequence.