A vaccine recently authorized for use in India could help solve one of the most pressing problems in global public health. The name of the vaccine is CORBEVAX, and according to Texas Children’s Hospital, it utilizes older but proven technology to vaccinate people against COVID, and can be more easily manufactured than any of the other vaccines in use today.
“CORBEVAX is a game-changer,” said Dr. Keith Martin, the executive director of Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Washington, D.C. “It’s going to enable countries around the world, particularly low-income countries, to be able to produce these vaccines and distribute them in a way that’s going to be affordable, effective, and safe.” The general problem that CORBEVAX attempts to solve is how to supply lower-income countries with a safe, effective, and affordable COVID vaccine.
If the vaccine proves successful in India, Peter Hotez of the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development and his collaborator Maria Elena Bottazzi told The Washington Press they are working with the World Health Organization to see how they can share the vaccine globally.
However, Joseph Osmundson, a virologist at New York University, has criticized the vaccine, cautioning against its use in the U.S. because not all of the data from its Phase 3 clinical trials has been made public. “It’s health care for lower- and middle-income countries that we would never accept here,” Osmundson said.
The vaccine first planted its roots around two decades ago, when Hotez and Bottazzi, both medical researchers at George Washington University, tackled the SARS virus in 2003. Both researchers previously worked on vaccines and treatment for tropical diseases such as hookworm and schistosomiasis.
After they moved to Houston to work in conjunction with Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development, they were able to create a vaccine candidate using protein subunit technology. The process involves taking proteins from a virus that can potentially induce an immune response but not necessarily cause disease.
Hotez said that they tried to present the idea for a new COVID vaccine created with the same principles to the U.S. government, but they were unimpressed. After doubting that they could get any traction from the government, the duo turned to private philanthropies. JPB Foundation in New York was a major donor early on, then the Kleberg Foundation, the John S. Dunn Foundation, Tito’s Vodka, and the MD Anderson Foundation followed suit shortly after, according to Hotez.
Clinical trials showed promising results from CORBEVAX, but the drawback is that it cannot be modified as quickly as mRNA vaccines to adjust to new variants. Hotez said they are currently working on a technology that will bring that quality to the new vaccine.
