In a possible breakthrough, an Israeli Defense Ministry-run laboratory claimed it had completed successful coronavirus vaccine trials on rodents, paving the way to further testing on other animals and then possibly human trials.
In a paper published Friday on the website of bioRxiv, an online repository for papers that haven’t yet been peer-reviewed, the Israel Institute for Biological Research, which is based in Ness Ziona, said it hopes to have a finished vaccine in a year, or possibly even earlier.
In the abstract of the report, the researchers say their vaccine, which they tested on hamsters, “results in rapid and potent induction of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes COVID-19.
During the trials, two groups of rodents were infected with the coronavirus, but only one group had first been given the vaccine. Whereas the unvaccinated group became sick, the vaccinated rodents remained healthy, researchers claimed.
“Importantly, single-dose vaccination was able to protect hamsters against SARS-CoV-2 challenge, as demonstrated by the abrogation of body weight loss of the immunized hamsters compared to unvaccinated hamsters,” they wrote in the report.
While the lungs of infected hamsters showed extensive tissue damage and a high viral load, the report said that those given the vaccine “showed only minor lung pathology” and had no viral titer.
Testing on rodents is a key preliminary stage in developing medicines and enables further testing to begin on other animals. If those are also successful, the trials will move to humans to check the vaccine’s effectiveness and for any side effects, the report said.