This vaccine would work as a booster.
Dr. Javier Morales, director of Clinical Research and infectologist. Photo: Journal of Medicine and Public Health. Fabiola Plaza.
Puerto Rico continues to stand out as part of three centers in the United States, where a group of scientists seeks positive results to protect the population from the Omicron variant and its sub-lineages through a vaccine intranasal, as this medium had exclusively reported earlier this year.
In an interview with Medicine and Public Health, Dr. Javier Morales, director of Clinical Research of Puerto Rico, reviewed the details of Phase 1 in which the study is located and some of its benefits of this type of immunization, in the midst of the positivity rate of around 30% of the virus on the Island.
“The fact that you receive a booster that reinforces the old and gives you immunity to the new, I think it will be effective, since we know that herd immunity with Omicron is not possible. People who were vaccinated 120 days ago, they are now being re-contaminated by new Omicron sub-lineages,” he explained.
He stressed that of this vaccine present beneficial effects by the intranasal route, what would be sought would be to avoid contagion from person to person. “This has already been done in Korea, but here it must be done with the rigor of the FDA.”
Is vaccine it works with DNA, and was conceptualized to attack the spike and another part of the ORF3A virus, which is responsible for assembling the virus protein to go out and invade new cells. That is, ORF3a, a conserved coronavirus protein, is involved in virus replication and release.
“So this DNA organelle doesn’t let the virus assemble inside a cell and it doesn’t let it out. That is, this vaccine tested in the first phase attacks the assembler, and this works for Ómicron and its different strains,” he said.
This study was conducted with the goal of being a booster for Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer vaccines.
“What is interesting about this study is that the virus enters through the nose, and if you achieve additional local immunity in the mucosa of the nose that produces type A immunoglobulin and the lymphocytes migrate to that mucosa, you stop the virus, and possibly you become in a person who does not carry the virus,” said the doctor about the theories advanced so far.
The research is done mostly in the United States, however, scientists seek to know the response of other patients in the world. Morales clarified that none vaccine will replace the other, that is, the patient would have to be vaccinated and apply the medicine in his nose, which indicates that there would be two types of doses.
He even explained that this new method of defense would not work for unvaccinated patients, but rather it would be a reinforcement against the virus and its different variants.
“Being phase one, you are going to be measuring the antibodies caused by the vaccineand after a month re-vaccinated with the available doses such as Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson if necessary,” he indicated.
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