(Fighting New Coronary Pneumonia) When the vaccine was born, when did the vaccine arrive?

China News Service, Beijing, March 1st: Under the epidemic, when will the vaccine be born?

China News Agency reporter Zhang Ziyang

The "inflection point has not yet arrived" in China, and the global epidemic is escalating. In the face of new crown pneumonia that humans have never encountered, the vaccine epidemic has also attracted much attention.

What should vaccine focus on? What to guard against?

As for vaccines, there is a common saying in the academic field: treating bacteria and viruses with heat or chemicals can produce inactivated vaccines; weakening the toxicity of bacteria and viruses can be developed into live attenuated vaccines. After determining the effective components of the vaccine, it is necessary to establish production processes and quality control, complete a series of experiments to obtain sufficient data to apply for the start of clinical trials, and evaluate its effectiveness and safety on animal models, and then on humans Phase I, II, and III clinical trials, market approvals, and production inspections often take years.

In particular, how difficult is a vaccine developed for a new virus? So far, there has been no precise answer in academia.

According to Ding Sheng, dean of the School of Pharmacy of Tsinghua University, vaccine development is not the same as some drug development in terms of biological mechanism. The actual problem is complex and not optimistic. To give a simple example, the AIDS vaccine has been in place for decades and has so far failed.

"At that time, SARS vaccines were limited in clinical trials (because there is no new epidemic, it is difficult to make effective). Some other viruses have also tried to make vaccines, using the same method and the same concept, but Not every one can be successful. "Ding Sheng said in an interview.

Some experts reminded that in the process of vaccine development, in addition to focusing on the success rate, it is also important to focus on safety. For example, it has appeared in human history. It was found in vaccine experiments that in some cases not only did not protect the population, but actually aggravated the infection. Therefore, some vaccines were stopped during the development stage.

"If it is a defensive vaccine, it will have higher safety requirements for healthy people," Ding Sheng emphasized.

In a previous media interview, Zhu Xiaoping, a tenured professor at the University of Maryland, also pointed out that not all vaccines are effective or safe. After the development of some vaccines, they may help and counteract. "So now it is reported online that various companies have a wide range of vaccines. Of course, in order to commercialize as soon as possible, sometimes they say their vaccines are too good or exaggerate their effects. There is an ethical issue."

How long will the vaccine wait?

Experts predict when the new crown pneumonia vaccine will be developed, ranging from a few months to as much as a year.

Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the School of Public Health at Columbia University in the United States, said that traditionally R & D for vaccines was not based on "months" but on "years." The question is can we shorten this time? I think we can, but it depends on many factors.

Zhang Wenhong, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, also holds a conservative attitude. He believes that as a coronavirus, we have not seen effective vaccines or drugs after the end of SARS. MERS, which is still circulating in the Middle East Ward, is also a coronavirus, and drugs and vaccines have not been made for so many years.

"Therefore, it is still difficult to do drugs and vaccines. Even if the progress is very smooth today, I really want to get the first vaccine, I estimate it will be the end of the year." Zhang Wenhong predicted.

In fact, since the first release of the new coronavirus genome sequence by Chinese scientists, research on new coronavirus vaccines has been carried out in various places. The reporter noticed that the five major vaccine research and development technology routes currently under development in China include inactivated vaccines, genetically engineered recombinant subunit vaccines, adenovirus vector vaccines, attenuated influenza virus vector vaccines, and nucleic acid vaccines.

Some experts claim that China has a solid foundation in developing inactivated vaccines. It appears that inactivated vaccines are expected to begin clinical trials as soon as April.

How to integrate resources and seek "antidote"?

WHO Director-General Tan Desai said recently that more than 20 new crown pneumonia vaccines are currently being developed and some treatments are undergoing clinical trials. The first results are expected in a few weeks.

Media reports said that companies including GlaxoSmithKline in the United Kingdom, Johnson & Johnson in the United States, and universities such as Oxford University and Cambridge University participated in research and development. Some of the fast-moving companies have completed early research and entered the animal experiment stage.

Regarding the general mobilization of this international war, Zeng Guang, chief scientist of epidemiology at the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a reporter from China News Agency that it is now like a state of "every arrow in the air". Faced with a new topic, many countries and institutions in the world are willing to "join the war" on their own initiative. In fact, when we look back on humans against a new type of virus in recent years, there have been successful and failed vaccine developments, but for the common destiny of human beings, everyone needs to do so.

In the eyes of many Chinese and foreign medical experts, the best way to change the rules of the game may be to identify the virus and find vaccines and drugs to solve it.

"Even if it is only 1 in 10,000, it is necessary to pay 100% of the effort to try." Dr. Qian Tianyi, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, said that although the vaccine may not solve the disease that was intended to be solved at that time, the accumulated cognition has implications for subsequent research and development. help. Without vaccines, humans can always only passively defend.

However, some scholars have noticed that various scattered forces in the world are now looking for a common "antidote", which consumes too much resources. Strengthening international cooperation is particularly important at this moment.

"So we should choose some and invest heavily in them, and I think that's what will happen," Lipkin said. (Finish)