sars-cov-2
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Maria Elena Bottazzi on vaccines in low- and middle-income countries
Maria Elena Bottazzi, born in Italy, raised in Honduras, is a microbiologist and infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, United States). She and her colleague Peter Hotez led a team in India to develop the Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax, get it manufactured, and then give it away to low- and middle-income countries, patent-free. ...
Low cost and open source: vaccines in developing countries
In South Africa, a scientific knowledge transfer hub is working to create a Covid-19 vaccine based on the publicly available sequence of Moderna's mRNA vaccine, without Moderna's involvement but with its approval. In India, scientists are also testing a vaccine to fight SARS-CoV-2. These seem to be big steps for developing countries in order to ...
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Petro Terblanche on the first African vaccine hub
Petro Terblanche is Health Science Professor at North-West University and is Managing Director at Afrigen Biologics in South Africa. Next to developing an open source vaccine, Afrigen hosts a global vaccine hub to build capacity and capabilities in low- and middle-income countries to design, develop and produce messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. Professor Terblanche, as managing ...
Omicron, another chapter in the Covid-19 pandemic
Before the winter holidays, a new, more transmissible variant was discovered. By now, Omicron is responsible for most new infections in Europe. What do we know so far? And what are the future possible scenarios?
A scientist’s opinion : Interview with Prof. András Falus about SARS-CoV-2 mutations
András Falus was born in 1947 in Budapest, Hungary and is a professor emeritus of Budapest’s Semmelweis University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His primary field of study is immunogenomics, allergy and onco-genomics. Most recently, his research has focused on histamine-related immunoregulation, non-coding DNA (e.g. microRNA) and microvesicles, a newly recognised ...
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Dr Deepti Gurdasani about SARS-CoV-2 mutations
Dr Deepti Gurdasani ’s background is as a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist. After completing her clinical training in internal medicine at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, she completed her MPhil in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Cambridge in 2010, followed by a PhD examining genetic factors associated with disease in genetically diverse ...
SARS-CoV-2: the challenges of mutation and possible strategies
The efficacy of the current COVID-19 vaccines might be lower against the new variants of SARS-CoV-2. The new strain that emerged in the United Kingdom has a higher transmissibility than previous strains of the virus. We asked scientists whether the new mutations are a threat to the current public health measures and to COVID-19 vaccines.
