New Delhi, Vaccine Discovery Programme supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India under the National Biopharma Mission, implemented by BIRAC moves into clinical
trials BIRAC has announced that ZyCoV-D, the plasmid DNA vaccine designed and
developed by Zydus and partially funded by the Department of Biotechnology,
Government of India has initiated Phase I/ II clinical trials in healthy subjects, making it
the first indigenously developed vaccine for COVID-19 to be administered in humans in
India.
The adaptive Phase I/II dose escalation, multi-centric study will assess the safety,
tolerability and immunogenicity of the vaccine. The human dosing of the vaccine marks a key milestone since the launching of the accelerated vaccine development
programme for COVID-19 in February 2020.
Dr. Renu Swarup, Secretary, DBT and Chairperson, BIRAC said, “The Department of Biotechnology Government of India has partnered with Zydus to address rapid
development of an indigenous vaccine for COVID-19 under the National Biopharma
Mission. This partnership with Zydus is to serve the country’s need for a vaccine to fight the dreaded pandemic which has put a billion people at risk. Such research endeavours will help the country to develop preventive strategies for future disease outbreaks as well and exemplifies the government’s focus on creating an ecosystem that nurtures and encourages new product innovation to make real and measurable changes to issues most relevant to our society.”
