Pakistan begins Phase-III clinical trial of coronavirus vaccine

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has begun phase III of the clinical trial of the coronavirus vaccine in the country after Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) approved the process on Monday.

A spokesman for the National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad said that the vaccine is being prepared by a Chinese biotech firm, CanSino Biologics, and Beijing Institute of Bio-Technology.

“This is the first time that the country is going through the phase-III clinical trial of any coronavirus vaccine,” he said and added that the Chinese company was already carrying out a clinical trial of the vaccine in Russia, Chile, Argentina and Saudi Arabia.

The vaccine trial in Pakistan is being carried out under the supervision of the NIH head, who is the principal investigator of the programme.

It is pertinent to mention here that a Pakistani pharmaceutical company AGM Pharma has signed a contract with the Chinese Company to conduct a clinical trial of the vaccine at the NIH.

Earlier in the day, China’s vaccine specialist CanSino Biologics has won a patent approval from Beijing for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate Ad5-nCOV, state media reported, citing documents from the country’s intellectual property regulator.

It is the first COVID-19 vaccine patent granted by China, state-owned newspaper People’s Daily reported on Sunday.

The paper cited documents published by China’s National Intellectual Property Administration saying that the patent was issued on Aug. 11.

Saudi Arabia said this month it plans to begin Phase III clinical trials for the CanSino vaccine. CanSino has said it is also in talks with Russia, Brazil and Chile to launch Phase III trials in those countries.

China’s Central Military Commission approved the use of the vaccine by the military on June 25 for a period of one year, CanSino had said in a filing. The vaccine candidate was developed jointly by CanSino and a research institute at the Academy of Military Science (AMS).

The vaccine candidate is built upon CanSinoBIO’s adenovirus-based viral vector vaccine technology platform, which has also been successfully applied to develop the globally innovative vaccine against Ebola virus infection.

Incorporated in 2009, CanSinoBIO commits to research, production and commercialization of innovative vaccines for China and global public health security.

It possesses four integrated platform technologies including adenovirus-based vectors, conjugation, protein design and recombination and formulation.