China’s CanSino Biologics will begin clinical trials for a Covid-19 inhalation vaccine next week, the company’s co-founder and chief executive Xuefeng Yu told CNBC on Sunday.
The effectiveness of the Chinese Covid vaccines is lower than that developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Earlier this month, the director of the China Center for Disease Control publicly acknowledged that Chinese vaccines “do not have very high levels of protection” and that they are considering giving people several injections of Covid to increase the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Yu told CNBC that an inhaled vaccine could be more effective than the injected one, as the coronavirus enters the human body through the respiratory tract.
CanSinoBIO is developing the inhalation vaccine together with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. To be clear, the company’s Adenovirus Type 5 Vector vaccine – or Ad5-nCoV – administered by injection was already approved for use in China and several other countries.
People who received Covid-19 injections 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 China’s Hainan province, Yu explained that in theory an inhaled vaccine could provide additional protection by activating antibodies or T cells – white blood cells essential for the immune system – in the respiratory tract.
If that layer of protection fails and the virus penetrates deeper into the body, other parts of the immune system can still fight the Covid virus, Yu added.
“So you add more layers – makes sense, right? So that’s why we’re going through the mucosal route,” he said.
The CEO said the company has used the same concept to develop an inhaled vaccine against tuberculosis or TB. Trials conducted in Canada showed that the inhaled dose of the TB vaccine needed to provide protection is “much, much less than the actual injection,” he said.
Improving vaccine efficacy
CanSinoBIO’s single-dose injected Covid vaccine has been approved for use in several countries, including China, Pakistan, Mexico and Hungary.
The company said interim data from phase three foreign clinical trials showed that the vaccine was 68.83% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 disease two weeks after one injection, while the rate dropped to 65 after four weeks. , 28%, reported Reuters.
In comparison, updated data showed that the Pfizer-BioNTech injection was 91% effective in preventing infection, while Moderna said the vaccine was more than 90% effective six months after the second injection.
Yu said that six months after the first injection, CanSinoBIO studied to add a booster shot, which managed to improve the immune response to the coronavirus.
“That also shows that our vaccine can be stimulated – whether it’s mixed with others or doing it ourselves, I think that really needs a scientific study. We need data to show which way can be improved”, said the CEO. .
Reuters reported on Monday that Chinese researchers are testing the blending of Covid vaccines developed by CanSinoBIO and a unit of Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products. The trial, which is underway in the eastern city of Nanjing, is expected to involve 120 participants, the report said.
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 wants to vaccinate 40% of its population by June.