Covid, new Italian vaccine: "It will be administered orally"

Another anti-Covid vaccine made in Italy is being tested. After the Reithera project, initially tested by the Spallanzani hospital in Rome but which seems to have stalled after the Court of Auditors' rejection, there is good news from theState University of Milan, which in collaboration with VisMederi Research is developing a new type of vaccine. The drug is called LeCoVax2 and according to the preclinical experimental study just concluded, it would be effective in inducing antibodies capable of neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The encouraging result comes from a lresearch work coordinated by Claudio Bandi, Sara Epis and Gian Vincenzo Zuccotti of the Romeo and Enrica Invernizzi Pediatric Research Center of the University of Milan, in collaboration with Emanuele Montomoli, scientific director of VisMederi Research srl (and professor at the University of Siena), who has already translated into two patents filed in February of this year. The Italian vaccine would not only be added to the existing ones, expanding the range of supplies, but also has particularly innovative characteristics.

Meanwhile, the LeCoVax2 mechanism is different from the other two explored so far: it does not work either with mRna, such as those produced by Pfizer and Moderna, or with modified adenoviruses, such as the one supplied by AstraZeneca. In this case, however, the vaccine is based on a modified unicellular microorganism, capable of both producing and transporting viral proteins that act as antigens, and which can therefore stimulate the production of antibodies in the vaccinated subject. Entering the technician, the microorganism that comes to our aid, providing us with a sort of "micro-protein factory", is Leishmania tarentolae, a Leishmania non-pathogenic to humans (and which has nothing to do with what causes leishmaniasis in dogs).

“Once inoculated into a mammal, the viral proteins produced in Leishmania have the ability to act like the proteins produced by the virus itself during natural infection. So how viral antigens capable of stimulating the production of antibodies”, explains Sara Epis of the State Department of Biosciences. The other important feature concerns the aspects related to storage and distribution, which we know are fundamental for managing the future phases of the pandemic, especially for reaching the poorest countries and the most remote territories on the planet.

"The peculiarities of LeCoVax2 - comments Gianvincenzo Zuccotti, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and pertaining to the L. Sacco Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences of the State University of Milan - make it very promising for application in developing countries. The technology required for its production is relatively simple; moreover, being administered in an inactivated form, it lends itself to being developed in rehydratable freeze-dried preparations, therefore easy to preserve and distribute”. Indeed, the Italian vaccine could be administered not through the classic skin injection but mucosal, then oral, which would facilitate its use, like a common drug.