Qatar- QU holds seminar on COVID vaccine development

  • Date: 12-Mar-2021
  • Source: MENAFN
  • Sector:Healthcare
  • Country:Qatar
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Qatar- QU holds seminar on COVID vaccine development

(MENAFN - The Peninsula) Qatar University's (QU) Biomedical Research Center (BRC) organised a lecture on 'SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine design enabled by prototype pathogen preparedness', presented by one of the biggest names in COVID-19 research. Dr. Kissmekia Corbett, a research fellow in the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Vaccine Research Center (VRC) in the USA, presented the lecture highlighting the developmental stages of the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Corbett led the collaboration between her institute, the NIH, and Moderna to develop and evaluate the Moderna mRNA vaccine in preclinical and clinical trials. She works under Dr. Barney Graham, Deputy Director of the VRC, and Anthony Fauci, Director of the NIAID. Dr. Corbett revealed the different stages of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine development, illustrating the utilised approaches that made the candidate vaccine available for phase one clinical trial, which occurred 66 days after the emergence of the pandemic. Relying on former knowledge from the MERS vaccine development, the Viral Pathogenesis Lab at VRC-NIH demonstrated the mRNA vaccine's ability to induce a potent antibody response in preclinical settings (using mice and monkeys) before the vaccine was tested in phases 1-3 clinical