Laboratories and researchers around the world are implementing different strategies to create an effective coronavirus vaccine
Researchers from around the world, unite! This is the appeal (ideal) that the international scientific community has made to develop a vaccine against Coronavirus in the shortest possible time. Now that even the US and the UK seem to have finally understood the true severity of the pandemic, laboratories around the world are working to develop effective solutions against Covid-19. The strategies put in place so far are different. In Italy, researchers are developing health protocols and therapies for the treatment of Coronavirus symptoms. At Cotugno Hospital in Naples, for example, a team led by Maurizio di Mauro and Attilio Bianchi is testing the effects of Remdesivir, a drug commonly used to treat arthritis, with good results. Other research centres in Italy are investigating a possible correlation between Coronavirus and HIV. Doctors have observed that HIV patients are not infected with coronavirus and have speculated that antiretroviral drugs may be effective in preventing or limiting infection.
Coronavirus: strategies for getting the vaccine
Outside Italy, researchers are working mainly on the creation of a vaccine against the Coronavirus. As the authors of the paper “The SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Pipeline: an Overview” – researchers Wen-Hsiang Chen, Ulrich Strych, Peter J. Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi – “the discovery that SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by infected individuals without symptoms, together with its ability to cause pandemic disease within a period of a few weeks, suggests that control of this viral infection will be challenging without the prospect of a vaccine”. In the race for the vaccine, the most encouraging results are coming from Israel, the United States and Germany. Researchers at the Galilee Research Institute have announced that they are close to creating a vaccine for the Coronavirus. In the USA, Modern biotech has produced the first experimental vaccine against the Coronavirus: tests are about to start in Seattle on 45 volunteers affected by Covid-19. In Germany, too, CureVac has already started the protocols for testing a vaccine. In all three cases, the researchers aim to intervene in the mechanism of propagation of the virus, in particular the spike proteins. These molecules function as “tiny picks” that allow the coronavirus to unhinge the entrance doors of cells in the human respiratory system to penetrate and multiply. Blocking these proteins means disarming the virus: this will be the goal of the coronavirus vaccine.
