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He says the first two cohorts of 10 participants each have been enrolled and both received two subcutaneous injections of the vaccine, three weeks apart. One cohort received a higher dosage than the other. “We’ll be measuring the antibody responses as well as the T-cell responses to the vaccine, but we do not have results yet,” says Meintjes.
Meintjes explains that right now, most of the Covid-19 vaccines are designed to produce an immune response against the spike protein of the virus. Yet, this particular part of the virus is prone to mutations, which have given rise to the different variants of the virus that have been seen worldwide.According to the head of the department of clinical virology at Lancet Laboratories, Professor Eftyhia Vardas, the spike protein is the part that sticks out of the surface of the virus.
He says the vaccine still contains the spike protein, as well as a more stable protein, the nucleocapsid. Professor Willem Hanekom, the director of the Africa Health Research Institute, explains that in a viral vector vaccine such as this one, a vector is basically just a carrier for the piece of the virus you want the immune system to respond to. He adds that a vector is needed in order to stimulate the immune system’s response, and a viral vector is effective because it is foreign to the immune system which will stimulate an immune response.