Coronavirus vaccine update: India’s second COVID-19 vaccine candidate ‘ZyCoV-D’ to start human trials; here is all you need to know

With more than 9 lakh positive coronavirus cases and close to 25,000 fatalities, India remains the third-worst hit nation with the contagion ravaging across the globe. In a desperate bid to contain the highly-infectious virus, which is spreading at an alarming rate, medical researchers and scientists are racking their brains to develop a cure. Being one of the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world, India is aiming to develop two indigenous vaccines to break the chain of the novel coronavirus.

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After the Indian biotechnology company, Bharat Biotech got the regulatory approval from the Drug Controller General of India to conduct clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin, another indigenous vaccine is all set to start human trials. Zydus Cadila has been given the nod by DCGI to conduct phase I/II clinical trials of its vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D. The second indigenous potential vaccine was developed at the Vaccine Technology Centre in Ahmedabad after it proved to be successful in its pre-clinical trials.

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For the unversed, preclinical trials are conducted on animal models to evaluate the results, efficacy and safety of the vaccine candidate. If the results seem to be promising, then the vaccine is given the regulatory approval by the monitoring committee to go-ahead with Phase I of human trials. The vaccine being developed by Zydus Cadila was seen to successfully develop an immune system response in various animals including rabbits, rats, mice and guinea pigs. It was also observed that the vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D was tolerated well in the preclinical trials.

The company had taken two different approaches to develop the vaccine candidate. The first one being the development of a DNA vaccine by using the viral protein of the virus, which woul