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November 23, 2020 There is an important piece of Italy behind the development of one of the most promising vaccine candidates against Sars-CoV-2.

This is the Advent company of the Irbm group whose headquarters are in Pomezia, about thirty kilometers from the capital.

The Italian company specializes in the treatment of depotentiated adenoviruses to be used as vectors to introduce viral proteins into the body capable of stimulating the immune reaction and thus preparing the patient to respond with their own antibodies to a virus infection that carries out and has carried out a key role in the development of the vaccine which is now also implemented by AstraZeneca.



On 7 February, after just under a month from the release by the Chinese authorities of the first genetic sequences of Sars-CoV2, the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, Irbm-Advent and Jenner Institute of the University of Oxford ( United Kingdom) have entered into a contract to produce the first batch of the new ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine needed to start the first clinical trials.

The Jenner Institute has worked in the past on a vaccine against another coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has been shown to induce strong immune responses against MERS after a single dose of the vaccine in the first clinical trial that took place. in Oxford.



A second clinical trial of the MERS vaccine is underway in Saudi Arabia, where the majority of Mers cases have occurred.

The same approach to vaccine manufacturing is being adopted for the new coronavirus vaccine.

Advent has developed a rapid development program that incorporates the manufacturing process and testing strategy to produce the vaccine for clinical trials as quickly as possible.



Vaccines are produced using a safe version of an adenovirus that affects chimpanzees;

another virus that can cause a common cold-like illness.

The technique used is called a "recombinant viral vector".

In practice it means that the adenovirus has been modified so that it cannot reproduce inside the body and thus become a safety-harmless viral vector.

To make it also "recombinant" to the adenovirus, the genetic code was then added to provide instructions for the production of the coronavirus Spike protein, so that, once injected into the body, the adenovirus begins to produce this protein.

This results in the formation of antibodies against the Spike protein, the same found on the surface of coronaviruses.



Advent is a company dedicated to the development and production of clinical batches of recombinant adenoviruses to support clinical trials for vaccines and for gene therapy applications.

Over the years, the Advent team has built an exceptional track record in the successful production of clinical batches for many infectious diseases, including Ebola.