After
4 years of research funded by Israel’s Ministry of Science & Technology,
MIGAL’s researchers have developed an effective vaccine against avian
coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), to be adapted soon and create a
human vaccine against COVID-19
Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology, Mr. Ofir Akunis, commented: “Congratulations to MIGAL on this exciting breakthrough. I am confident that there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat.” Minister Akunis has instructed the Director General of the Ministry of Science and Technology to fast-track all approval processes with the goal of bringing the human vaccine to market as quickly as possible.
MIGAL has achieved a scientific
breakthrough that will lead to the rapid creation of a vaccine against
Coronavirus. This possibility was identified as a by-product of MIGAL’s
development of a vaccine against IBV (Infectious Bronchitis Virus), a disease
affecting poultry, whose effectiveness has been proven in pre-clinical trials
carried out at the Volcani Institute. MIGAL has now made required genetic
adjustments to adapt the vaccine to COVID-19, the human strain of coronavirus,
and is working to achieve the safety approvals that will enable in-vivo testing,
enable the initiation of production of a vaccine to counter the Coronavirus
epidemic currently spreading throughout the world, which so far has claimed
2,666 lives.
From research conducted at MIGAL,
it has been found that the poultry coronavirus has high genetic similarity to
the human COVID-19, and that it uses the same infection mechanism, a fact that
increases the likelihood of achieving an effective human vaccine in a very
short period of time.
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