16 de marzo de 2020, 11:5Brasilia, Mar 16 (Prensa Latina) Researchers of the Immunology Laboratory of the Heart Institute at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sao Paulo (USP) are currently seeking a candidate vaccine to fight the new coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2.
According to Jornal da USP website, through a different strategy from those adopted by pharmaceutical industries and research groups in several countries, the Brazilian scientists hope to accelerate the development and achieve, in coming months, a candidate vaccine to fight the virus that can be tested in animals.
'We believe that the strategy we are using to participate in this worldwide effort to develop a candidate vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 is very promising,' Jorge Kalil, director of the Laboratory of Immunology and coordinator of the project, told the FAPESP Agency.
Kalil assured that such a vaccine could induce a better immune response than other proposals, mainly based on mRNA vaccines. The messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) carries information from DNA in the nucleus to ribosomes in the cytoplasm.
Used in the development of the first experimental coronavirus vaccine, announced in late February in the United States, the mRNA technology platform is based on the insertion into the vaccine of synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules containing the instructions to produce any protein recognizable by the immune system.
According to the website, the idea is that the immune system recognizes these artificial proteins and then identifies and fights the real coronavirus.
A latest report from the Ministry of Health records about 200 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Brazil, where the suspected cases rose to 1,913 and 1,486 cases have been discarded.