a good shot
2 Texas medical powerhouses deploy game-changing COVID-19 vaccine worldwide
With the U.S. logging its highest single-day total of new COVID-19 cases (441,278 infections) and some 281, 808, 270 cases documented worldwide, new treatments are in major demand — especially in emerging nations.
To that end, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine announced a new COVID-19 vaccine that’s ready to deploy in India and soon, other underserved countries.
Corbevax, which is dubbed “The world’s COVID-19 vaccine,” utilizes a traditional recombinant protein-based technology that will enable production at large scales, per a press release. That means it will be widely accessible to inoculate the global population.
This new vaccine was developed at Texas Children’s Hospital CVD and led by co-directors Drs. Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez — and in-licensed from BCM Ventures, Baylor College of Medicine’s integrated commercialization team, to Hyderabad-based vaccine and pharmaceutical company Biological E. Limited.
After completing two phase III clinical trials involving more than 3,000 subjects, the vaccine was found to be safe, well tolerated, and immunogenic. Current research shows Corbevax is notably effective against the ancestral-Wuhan strain and the delta variant, press materials note.
Safe, streamlined, low-cost vaccines for middle- to low-income countries are central to the world’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, the two Houston organizations note. Indeed, without widespread vaccination of populations in the Global South, additional virus variants will arise, hindering the progress achieved by currently available vaccines in the United States and other Western countries, per research.
“This announcement is an important first step in vaccinating the world and halting the pandemic,” said Hotez in a statement. “Our vaccine technology offers a path to address an unfolding humanitarian crisis, namely the vulnerability the low- and middle-income countries face against the delta variant. Widespread and global vaccination with our Texas Children’s-Baylor-BE vaccine would also forestall the emergence of new variants. We have previously missed that opportunity for the alpha and delta variant. Now is our chance to prevent a new global wave from what might follow.”
