How COVID-19 Vaccine May Be Tested?
Russian biotech engineers created a «COVID-19 model» to study the disease and test a vaccine.
Patent: 2730250
Authors: Maxim Shkurnikov, Andrey Poloznikov
Patent holder: National Medical Research Radiological Centre
Studies pathogen infection mechanisms, as well as medicine and active substance trials, are always carried out in laboratories before tests on living organisms begin. Another way is so-called in vitro method, i.e. studies are performed with microorganisms, cells, or biological molecules in a controlled environment outside their normal biological context (a living organism). Therefore, one of the most important issues of modern biotechnology and genetic engineering is to create «active real-size models of the virus», more precisely, laboratory samples that «act» and have the most similar structure to the «original» virus. Such samples allow to develop and test new drugs and study the «behavior» of the virus in different temperatures and so on. During the last year, the best world scientists have been trying to reproduce such models of SARS-CoV-2 infection (causative agent for COVID-19).
Russian scientists were among the first to succeed in this process. In the course of laboratory experiments — «cellular engineering» — they created a cellular model based on the intestinal epithelial cell that can be used for COVID-19 studies. The main advantage of the Russian invention is that the model is more physiological, i.e. it contains closest to the natural gene ratio involved in virus interactions with host cells in a human body. In other words, it is currently the most accurate artificial model of the virus in the world, and, its «behavior» under different factors is the closest possible to natural virus «behavior» in a living organism. Thus, this model will allow the scientists to adopt treatment protocols, test medicines at an early stage, and study virus reaction to various external factors, e.g. temperature, climate, or other viruses attacks.
Details are found in the patent publication.
