Indian Immunologicals Limited (IIL), a leading vaccine manufacturer, has announced live-attenuated needle free intra-nasal booster vaccine developed against SARS-CoV-2 using codon deoptimization technology in collaboration with Griffith University, Australia. This groundbreaking work on Covid-19 vaccine has been published in the world’s leading science Journal ‘ ’ on 26 August 2024. The danger due to COVID 19 is still not over.
It is still killing around 1,700 people a week around the world. World Health Organization urge people at-risk to keep up with their vaccinations with boosters. Among different formats of vaccines available, it is well known that live attenuated vaccine generates a robust and broad-spectrum neutralizing antibody response.
IIL’s needle free intra-nasal booster vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 developed using codon deoptimization technology demonstrated remarkable stability and maintained safety in extensive animal studies. Codon deoptimization involves decreasing the frequency of underrepresented codon pairs (genetic determinant for amino acids) without changing amino acid sequences. It is a highly efficient virus attenuation strategy that utilizes suboptimal codon pairs to achieve attenuation of recoded viruses.
Virtually all the viruses can be attenuated by this method. Degree of attenuation can be regulated from 1-100% as required. It is extremely safe and less time-consuming than the conventional way of attenuating viruses which usually takes seve.