The technologies being used for making COVID-19 vaccine

The United Kingdom is the first country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine.  Developed by Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE, the vaccine will be available in Britain this week. It is being hoped the vaccine will provide the much-needed protection against the deadly virus especially to healthcare workers and the elderly. The race for other vaccines is also on.

There are four technologies being used to produce these vaccines.

The researchers have tried four prominent technologies and platforms to develop vaccines to check the spread of COVID-19.

VIRUS BASED

Attenuated live virus (ALV) or inactivated dead virus (IDV) are introduced into the body, which develops antigens to fight viruses. The immune system is ready to fight virus now. Measles, mumps, smallpox vaccines are ALV-based while influenza , rabies and Hepatitis A are IDV-based. Bharat Biotech is working on IDV vaccine.

PROTEIN BASED

A protein is extracted from the virus (alive or inactivated), purified, and injected as a vaccine. Since coronavirus is full of spikes, spike protein is what researchers are trying to use to generate immune response in the body. There are influenza vaccines based on this platform.

VIRAL VECTOR

The gene for a pathogen protein is inserted into a different virus that can infect someone without causing disease. This safe virus serves as 'platform' or 'vector' to deliver protein that triggers immune response to the virus. Oxford University and Astra Zeneca vaccine, to be produced by Serum Institute, contains genetic sequence of the surface spike protein of Coronavirus.

NUCLEIC ACID