A team led by an Indian scientist in Australia has grown the first batch of the virus at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in India for their forthcoming studies.
In a report published by The Times of India, “A team of researcher-led by Indian Professor SS Vasan at Doherty Institute, that last week managed to isolate the virus from human samples. The growth of the virus is important and is considering to scale-up virus for preclinical studies.”
Vasan, who is the principal investigator of CSIRO’s preclinical response project, told the publication, “Working with the real virus is quicker, as it expedites the preclinical studies on the relative efficacy of vaccine candidates under development.”
“His colleagues at the Animal Health Laboratory in Australia are also working on diagnostics, surveillance, and response,” he added.
“Another part of the CSIRO (Manufacturing) is supporting the scale-up of vaccine antigens being developed by the University of Queensland,” he said.
Apart from fuelling the essential vaccine preclinical studies, Vasan told the publication, “It will accelerate the development and evaluation of therapeutics to complement vaccines too.”
