CubaPLUS Magazine

The US magazine BioWorld today highlighted Cuba's achievements in the development of its second Sovereign 02 vaccine candidate against Covid-19, which is currently undergoing phase I of clinical trials.

According to the text published in recent hours, the Caribbean island has a lot of experience in formulating conjugate vaccines, a group to which this drug belongs. 'Evidence of this is the QUIMI-HIB injectable against Haemophilus Influenzae type B, which causes meningitis and pneumonia in the first years of life,' the text refers.

As Fabrizio Chiodo, research assistant professor at Italy's National Research Institute, explained to BioWorld, this is the second vaccine under development in the small country of just over 11 million inhabitants and it is 'extremely novel.' Sovereign 02 consists of a subunit vaccine in which the virus antigen, the receptor-binding domain (RBD), is chemically bound to tetanus toxoid.

This means that the vaccine antigen is a copy molecule of that present in the virus and to obtain it, it is necessary to have the genetic information of this viral protein, and from a process of genetic engineering, it is programmed into a higher organism cell called CHO.

With these characteristics, Soberana 02 gives greater hope, for its safety for children, infants and the elderly population because it enhances the immune system, said Chiodo. Phase I of clinical trials of the second vaccine candidate of the largest of the Antilles against Covid-19, began at the beginning of this month and a group of 40 volunteers between 19 and 59 years old has already been inoculated. 

'This is not one stage after another; there is a lot of overlap, so things can go faster. There are ways to let all the control agencies know that the situation is very safe with Soberana 02,' the professor told BioWorld .

The Caribbean nation was the first in Latin America to register its own vaccine candidate against Covid-19 and currently has four projects for this purpose: Sovereign 01, 02; Mambisa and Abdala.

The president of the BioCubaFarma business group, Eduardo Martínez, recently highlighted the strategy outlined to have Cuban vaccines against Covid-19. 'It is going well and in 2021 the population of the country will be immunized against this virus,' he said.