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China granting emergency use of its self-developed recombinant
protein subunit vaccine against COVID-19 will add another weapon in the
arsenal of the global fight against the pandemic, the vaccine's key
scientist said on Sunday. The vaccine was developed by the Institute of Microbiology of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Anhui Zhifei Longcom
Biopharmaceutical. Gao Fu, the head of China's Center for Disease Control, led the
development of the protein subunit vaccine, which was approved by
regulators last week for emergency use. It is the fourth vaccine to be
given emergency use approval in China, three of which have since been
approved for conditional market use. Yan Jinghua, a key scientist behind the vaccine and a researcher from
the CAS microbiology institute, said in a news briefing that the
recombinant subunit vaccine works by training the body to recognize the
spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which is similar to many other COVID-19
vaccines. The difference with the subunit protein vaccine is that scientists
will need to grow a genetically modified version of the protein in cells
and then purify it before turning it into a vaccine, Yan said. One of the biggest advantages of the subunit vaccine is that it does
not involve cultivating live viruses, so the production process is safe
and easy to scale up, she said. Meanwhile, this type of vaccine can be
stored at 2 to 8 C, making it easy for storage and transportation. Yan said the vaccine can induce a relatively high level of
neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19, though she did not disclose
any details. Phase III clinical trials of the vaccine were launched in China,
Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Ecuador and Indonesia in November 2020, with
29,000 volunteers scheduled to be vaccinated. The vaccine completed
phase I and II clinical trials in October 2020, and results showed there
were no serious adverse reactions.
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