Swiss vaccine candidates enter clinical trial phase

Researchers from Bern, Geneva, Berlin and Riems are developing two vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2. Thanks to a just-signed collaboration agreement with the Basel-based biotech company RocketVax AG, they can now be prepped for phase I of the clinical trials required for regulatory approval. Although numerous vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are already available worldwide, new technologies must be continuously developed in order to optimise immunisation against new virus variants. Second-generation vaccines must not only meet high standards of safety and efficacy, they must also allow ease of production and storage and, if possible, simplified administration. Prospects for nasal spray vaccine. The team of Volker Thiel, virologist at the University of Bern and at the Institute of Virology and Immunology IVI, is developing a live-attenuated vaccine, i.e. a form of the virus that does not make people sick but still elicits an immune response. Live vaccines have already proven successful in other vaccination drives, for example against measles.