RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Amid concerns that Brazil will interrupt the vaccination campaign for lack of doses, researchers from two universities in Finland sought the Brazilian government to sign a partnership for the development of a new vaccine against the coronavirus.
The agreement would serve to conduct phase 3 trials in Brazil between June and July this year. Subsequently, the Finnish universities would provide the technology transfer (teach step by step) for the manufacture of the immunizer in Brazil – the same type of agreement that was signed by the Butantan Institute with SinoVac and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) with AstraZeneca.
The information was confirmed by the Finnish Embassy in Brazil, which approached the Brazilian Embassy in Helsinki.
The vaccine is under development by scientists from the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland.
The researchers contacted the Brazilian Embassy in Helsinki, and the request was forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Health. Thereafter, the Ministry of Health granted Fiocruz one week to reply to the proposal.
Finland and Brazil are said to be interested in the negotiation and, consequently, the Finnish Embassy called for “urgent action”.
According to the University of Eastern Finland website, the vaccine is being developed using adenovirus viral vector technology – that is, a cold virus is modified to contain a small portion of Sars-Cov-2 and trigger the body’s immune response.
The institution disclosed in April last year that the vaccine would be administered in the form of a nasal spray. The University of Eastern Finland said it has been granted EUR 1 billion for the studies by the Academy of Finland, the Finnish government’s funding body for science.
One of the coordinators of the study, Professor Seppo Ylä-Herttuala, had already been researching the viral vector technology with adenovirus for gene therapy against cancer and cardiovascular diseases.