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Now light has been put on the work of this researcher from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), although her career is more than long. Sonia Zúñiga works in the laboratory of Luis Enjuanes and Isabel Sola at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) and since they learned of the new Wuhan coronavirus, the so-called SARS-CoV-2, in January, they went to work to find a vaccine against him.

Much has been said these days about 'its vaccine' and China and the US. Why are they different proposals? Unlike other vaccines that are being tested in the United States, China or others that are made faster, which are based on a single component of the virus, ours is based on the complete virus, so that the immune system presents itself just like a normal virus. This means that the organism will recognize it better, with a response more similar to if it were a real virus and that better prepares the body for the circulating pathogen. Where is the nuance that provokes that response? In the way of stimulating the organism . It will protect you as if you were acting in a real context of a complete virus. It is a fully attenuated pathogen that does not cause any type of disease. But it will deliver a much stronger response, and probably much more durable, than those based on a single component of the virus. When he points out that it will be more durable, what does he mean? It means that the response of the immune system that he protects is likely to last longer over time. It has been suggested that, once hers is developed, in addition to being more powerful, it will be cheaper. How is this explained? Well, that depends. It is necessary to contextualize a lot of what type of vaccine we are talking about. There are some, which we come to call 'quick and easy', which are very cheap to manufacture, which is why they are made so soon. That no longer depends so much on what we propose. Because the fact that it can be produced more easily and quickly, in a scalable way and that it is cost efficient, it should be valued. That it is cheaper than any of these so-called 'easy', so to speak, that are currently being manufactured, that would have to be studied. I do not know. Because some of those that are currently being developed are very cheap to produce and therefore are manufactured immediately. When it comes to efficiency, in all that vaccine production, doesn't that mean losing the safety effect? Sure, that's a general thing that is common to all vaccines. Any formula that reaches manufacturing, once it has passed pre-clinical trials in animals and trials in humans is already, from the point of view of manufacturing and production scaling, optimized so that none of the vaccines will lose that deficiency. That is an issue that laboratories already have well controlled. In this path of the long-awaited vaccine, what is its role? The truth is that we carry out everything that is development and pre-clinical trials. Later, this passes into the hands of the laboratories that are the ones who know the production escalation best. There is a need for a system that can take on large-scale production, is cost-efficient and, of course, never loses the effectiveness of the vaccine that has been achieved through clinical trials. Pharmaceutical companies are the specialists in this. Have you not considered doing it from the laboratory? No. Once we have validity of the vaccine in animal models and have passed the preclinical tests, it would be in the hands of companies or organizations that could carry them out. We are a research laboratory and this type of thing is already out of our powers. We have neither the resources nor the means, nor could we have them. Because this step must be taken by expert companies taking into account all the measures of the regulatory agencies, which are also those that have contact with hospitals, the patient cohort, etc. So we are talking about a different level than what we are prepared in the laboratory. When could they have a concrete formula? Since we started in January, when we saw that the first cases occurred in China, it would be in about six months maximum. We could have a vaccine candidate who had passed pre-clinical animal trials. From there, we hope that several of the vaccine candidates will work and then move on to human clinical trials. And, that is already out of our hands. But Science at this time, since the virus appeared three months ago has made important leaps in the knowledge of the virus, right? Yes, and it is what has made it possible for so many vaccines to be studied. Having the genetic sequencing of it has been essential for this step. Until the vaccine arrives, are preventive measures the only thing that works? So is. Each country, like ours, has had to adopt them when the times required it. Only the subsequent analysis of the data will allow us to put all this into perspective and be able to better study each decision with the results. We will not have a vaccine right now, that requires your time and processes. Meanwhile, it is necessary to break with the transmissibility of the virus and this is achieved with the isolation measures that are being carried out in the different affected countries. But, it must also be said that its effects are not immediate and it takes time for them to take effect. Can we say that SARS-Cov-2 is a 'smart' virus? Well, if we refer to it as a pathogen that does not kill its host, as Ebola does, and that is transmitted with great ease, we could describe it as such.

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