London: A leading British scientist has made a significant breakthrough in the race for a coronavirus vaccine by reducing a part of the normal development time from ‘two to three years to just 14 days’, ‘Sky News’ reported here Wednesday.
Robin Shattock, head of mucosal infection and immunity at Imperial College London, said he is now at the stage to start testing the vaccine on animals as early as next week with human studies in the summer if enough funding is secured, reported ‘Sky’.
“Conventional approaches usually take at least two to three years before you even get to the clinic,” Shattock has been quoted as saying by ‘Sky’. “And we’ve gone from that sequence to generating a candidate in the laboratory in 14 days,” added Shattock.
The vaccine will be too late for this current outbreak but it will be crucial if there is another one, according to Shattock.
The virus which has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has so far claimed close to 400 hundred lines. Apart from the majority of deaths in China, the virus has claimed lives in the Philippines and Hong Kong. A number of suspected coronavirus cases have been reported from other parts of the world, including India.
Agencies