Elfatih Ibrahim Outlines the Process of Developing a Vaccine and What the General Public Does Not Know

Even at its most effective, self-isolation can only slow the spread of the respiratory disease COVID-19, working to “flatten the curve,” as has become popular nomenclature in today’s age. With the World Health Organization officially declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, all eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine, because unlike medicines that treat or cure viruses and diseases, vaccines are the only option in preventing someone from getting sick with the disease in the first place.

Dozens of companies, laboratories and academic institutions are racing to create such a vaccine, with some of them already engaging in testing on human candidates and others beginning the process of testing on animals. While the world is holding out hope for a vaccine and one that arrives quickly at that, most of the populace does not truly understand what a vaccine is and the arduous process behind its manufacturing. Elfatih Ibrahim, an entrepreneur, registered Pharmacist and the former owner of Maxwell Pharmacy Inc, has studied the theory behind vaccine propagation extensively and has been privy to their adjacent hands-on laboratory work.

Development

Elfatih Ibrahim attests that the simplest way to define a vaccine is that it is made by taking viruses or bacteria and weakening them so that they can’t replicate themselves very well, or ideally, replicate at all. Children given different procedural vaccines are exposed to enough of the virus so as to develop an immunity to it, but not enough to make them sick. Ibrahim also outlines that are generally four ways that viruses and bacteria are weakened to make vaccines. Those methods include: changing the virus by manipulating its genes (a process called cell culture adaptation) so that the virus replicates poorly, destroying the virus’s blueprint (or genes) so that the virus can’t replicate at all, cropping and utilizing only a part of the virus or bacteria, that is, not enough of it to allow for replication, and finally, taking the toxin that is released from the bacteria, purifying it, and killing it so it can’t do any harm.

Clinical Research

Once the proper methodology has been identified and a presumably effective vaccine has been created, the pre-clinical research portion of the vaccine process begins. In his work, Elfatih Ibrahim has helped to organize the four phases of vaccine testing as clinical studies. Phase I is when the vaccine is tested in a very small group of people, sometimes as few as half a dozen. This helps to rule out major safety problems and also helps doctors to work out the right dose for the next step in the testing process. Phase II trials involve giving the vaccine to a larger number of people (often 100 or 200 but sometimes in the 1,000s). At this point, researchers want to see whether the vaccine gives a consistent immune response and they watch for any side effects that might occur. Phase III trials are then often conducted to test how the vaccine protects against natural infection and include tens of thousands of healthy volunteers so that doctors have a better chance of discovering rare problems which did not show up in smaller studies. At that point, the ongoing monitoring of the vaccine’s effect takes place as part of what is called Phase IV where doctors are encouraged to report any unexpected apparent side-effects.

The process of creating, testing and distributing a vaccine is, very rightly-so, a complex endeavour. At the same time, even if the peak of the virus is at a decline before a vaccine is completed, it would very well still save many lives, especially if the virus becomes endemic or perennially circulating, like the common flu and if there are further, possibly seasonal, outbreaks. Until then, our best hope is to contain the disease as much as possible and to be sage about germs and social interactions.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes