INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
mix-and-match dose after the primary dose)
iNCOVACC has got approval for restricted use in emergency situations on those aged 18 years and above, for heterologous booster after two
got approval from the Chinese regulator the same month
But the DCGI had approved iNCOVACC as a primary dose vaccine for Covid-19.
The company was thus awaiting approval for administering the
vaccine as a booster shot, after Covishield or Covaxin shots
At the moment, not many are left in the eligible population who have not taken a single shot of the Covid-19 vaccine
Therefore, the company had no potential market for iNCOVACC as a primary two-dose regimen.
In September, Krishna Ella, chairman and
managing director, Bharat Biotech, admitted that there was hardly any demand
first intranasal vaccine for Covid to receive approval for the primary two-dose schedule, and also for heterologous booster.
iNCOVACC is a
chimpanzee adenovirus-based vectored recombinant nasal vaccine that has been specifically formulated to allow intranasal delivery through
The nasal delivery system has been designed and developed to be cost-effective in low- and middle-income countries, the company said
on the viral vector platform
A source told Business Standard earlier that production can be scaled up to 1 billion annual doses for the nasal vaccine easily.
Intranasal
Covid-19 vaccines can prime the immune cells in the thin mucous membranes of nose and mouth -- the spots through which the Sars-CoV-2 virus
Therefore, it can stop the virus from replicating at its entry, and thus prevent it before it spreads to lungs and other parts of the body
Vaccine developers feel that mucosal vaccines will be successful in preventing mild cases of illness and blocking transmission to other
people.
The Hyderabad-based company has already established large manufacturing capabilities at multiple sites across Gujarat, Karnataka,
Maharashtra, and Telangana, the company said on August 15.
This vaccine was developed in partnership with Washington University-St Louis,
which designed and developed the recombinant adenoviral-vectored constructs and evaluated them in preclinical studies for efficacy
Product developments related to preclinical safety evaluation, large-scale manufacturing scale-up, formulation, and delivery device
development, including human clinical trials, were conducted by Bharat Biotech
Diamond of Washington University in St
Louis, who co-developed the nasal vaccine technology with Washington University colleague David Curiel
