Today conventional COVID-19 vaccines are administered by trained medical staff under specific conditions. This raises the issue that vaccinating the general population with injectable vaccines becomes an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Oral and nasal vaccines could solve these issues and data points to the necessity of these vaccines.
19 million Americans who did not want to receive an injectable vaccine would take an oral dose; 70% of those polled said they prefer pill over injection.
Oral and nasal vaccines lower the costs tied to injectable vaccines. They do not require a professional to administer and do not require deep freeze. They can theoretically be shipped directly to the patient for self-administration, cutting costs of labor, training, bio-hazard waste, and storage. The vaccines would also be cheaper to produce and can be distributed across the globe easily, even to developing countries where access to cold-chain is limited.
The ease of shipping and administrering Oral and Nasal vaccines also means that we could get closer to herd immunity. The vaccines can be sent to underdeveloped countries where Covid takes a larger toll on the population, which will help prevent spread to other countries in the world.
Today, many companies are racing to get approved for their oral and nasal vaccines. Currently, there are 12 in clinical development, and 7 in the pre-clinical stage.
Organizations in clinical development include:
Vaxart
ImmunityBio Inc.
Symvivo Corporation
VaxForm
AstraZeneca
University of Hong Kong, Xiamen University, and Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy
Codagenix/Serum Institute of India
Mambisa
Altimmune Inc.
Bharat Biotech International Limited
Meissa Vaccines Inc.
Avimex
Organizations in the Pre-Clinical development:
Rokote Laboratories Finland Ltd
University of Virginia
BiOCAD and IEM
AuraVax Therapeutics Inc.
Stabilitech Biopharma Ltd
MIGAL Galilee Research Institute
Oravax Medical Inc.
These organizations see the necessity of different types of vaccines and all work toward that common goal. The data is very promising and we can expect to see changes in the way we take Covid vaccines. This opens the door to possibilities for other injected treatments to also follow this direction.
