A COVID-19 vaccine that could be taken as a pill is expected to enter clinical trials in the second quarter of 2021, according to Medscape.
Oravax Medical, which is a new joint venture of the Israeli-American company Oramed and the Indian company Premas Biotech, will be developing the oral vaccine, according to Business Insider.
Currently, all vaccines available are administered by injection.
One of the advantages of an oral vaccine is that you could take it at home rather than having the vaccine administered by healthcare professional personnel at a medical center.
Oramed said the oral vaccine would also be easier to distribute as it could be shipped in a normal refrigerator and stored at room temperature.
CEO of Oramed Nadav Kidron said in a statement, “An oral COVID-19 vaccine would eliminate several barriers to rapid, widescale distribution, potentially enabling people to take the vaccine themselves at home.”
“While ease of administration is critical today to accelerate inoculation rates, an oral vaccine could become even more valuable in the case that a COVID-19 vaccine may be recommended annually like the standard flu shot,” he added.
Kidron, who is also the president and director of Oramed, told The Jerusalem Post that the Oravax vaccine “targets three structural proteins of the novel coronavirus, as opposed to the single spike protein targeted via the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. That would make the vaccine more resistant to COVID-19 variants.”
The news outlet reports that the experimental oral vaccine is yeast-based, which would make it cheaper to manufacture.
Oramed said the vaccine has shown promising results in animal studies. However, it is unclear how long it will take to conduct human trials.
The company said, “Oravax anticipates commencing a clinical study during the second quarter of 2021.”
Currently, in the United States, the rotavirus, adenovirus, cholera vaccine, and oral typhoid vaccines are the only vaccines administered orally, according to the CDC. The article appeared on Medscape Medical News.
