COVID-19 Vaccine Developed In Houston Gets Authorization In India

HOUSTON, TX — A new COVID-19 vaccine developed in Houston received emergency use authorization in India and could be a breakthrough in helping inoculate underserved countries against the coronavirus.

Texas Children's Hospital and the Baylor College of Medicine announced Tuesday that CORBEVAX was given emergency use authorization by the Drugs Controller General of India to launch in the country with other underserved countries expected to follow.

CORBEVAX is a protein subunit vaccine developed at Texas Children's Hospital's Center for Vaccine Development. Protein subunit vaccines are made using proteins from a pathogen, which then illicit an immune response in the recipient.

The protein-based technology will enable production at large scales, which could help it become globally accessible, especially to underserved countries, according to the release.

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CORBEVAX has undergone two Phase III clinical trials involving more than 3,000 subjects and was found to be safe. The vaccine showed efficacy of over 90 percent in preventing symptomatic infections from the ancestral Wuhan strain of coronavirus and efficacy of over 80 percent in preventing symptomatic infections from the delta variant. None of the subjects had serious adverse reactions, according to the release.

“Protein-based vaccines have been widely used to prevent many other diseases, have proven safety records, and use economies of scale to achieve low-cost scalability across the world,” Co-Director of the Center for Vaccine Development Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi said. “Our decade-long studies advancing coronavirus vaccine prototypes has led to the creation of this vaccine, which will fill the access gap created by the more expensive, newer vaccine technologies and that today are still not able to be quickly scaled for global production.”