 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us as we always do on Mondays. Professor Satyajit Raab and we'll be discussing a good news for our viewers that we have a new vaccine which is available to Indians particularly also to age group of 12 to 18 among children. We have a new vaccine which is available now to youngsters also 12 to 18 age group Zyder's Cadillac D vaccine. Satyajit, this is the first DNA vaccine in the world. What is a DNA vaccine and how is it different from the mRNA vaccines we have been hearing about which is essentially I presume are RNA vaccines. So we've discussed this over the past year that when we make a vaccine we are essentially taking a protein of the virus and showing that protein to the immune system so that it can make antibodies against it and there are two ways that we can show the protein to the immune system. One is make the protein in the test tube or in the manufacturing process such as with the Bharat Biotecho vaccine or the Novavax protein vaccine. Mix it with a little adjuvant and put it into the body. The other category is to put the genetic information code for the vaccine into the body for the protein into the body and let the genetic code for the protein be read by the body so that the body makes the protein the target protein of the virus and also responds to it. Now in that second category where we inject the genetic code of the virus protein we currently had so far two ways of injecting the genetic code remember the so-called central dogma of biology which is that proteins are coded in the DNA and then the code is read first into an RNA and then the RNA is translated into a protein. So one successful set of vaccines the NIH Moderna and the BioNTech Pfizer vaccines are actually RNA, mRNA is simply messenger RNA, RNA packaged and injected so that when it's injected it gets into cells and is directly translated by cellular machineries into virus protein that's the RNA or the mRNA vaccine. The other genetic code vaccine platform that we've been familiar with is the adenovirus vector-based platform where the genetic code for the COVID-19 target the spike protein genetic code is put into an adenovirus sequence the adenovirus is made and the adenovirus itself functions as the carrier of the genetic code. When it is put into the body it gets into cells and then all its proteins are made including the COVID-19 relevant target protein that we are talking about and this is what happens with the Oxford AstraZeneca serum Institute Covishield it's also what happens with the Gamalaya Institute Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines and so on as also the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The third way of doing it is a sort of in between you're going to just inject the genetic code rather than any adenovirus carrier but the genetic code consists of the DNA rather than the RNA and that's what the Zydus Cadillavaxine the so-called Zycov D consists of it's the DNA level genetic code of the COVID-19 spike protein target and that's injected with enough information there for the cells of the body again to take up the DNA that's injected and to first make RNA from it and then to make protein from it. So these are really small technical variations the advantages and disadvantages seem so far to vary so much that nothing very definitive about a given platform by way of advantage or disadvantage can be said but is it a different platform technology? Is it a different manufacturing technology? Absolutely yes and is it the first time? Absolutely yes although the DNA packaging is on license from I think an American small startup. What's called the plasmid sort of which carries the DNA into the body. A quick question for you here that when we talk about the DNA vaccine one of the advantages which has been talked about is the fact that it is stable at 2 to 8 degree centigrade and does not need the very high refrigeration minus 72, minus 80 degree centigrade which the mRNA vaccine requires therefore this is much more appropriate for a large number of countries then what the mRNA vaccines could do? Absolutely and that's a clear advantage of these so-called plasmid DNA based vaccines although the packaging technology is again the same sort of lipid and related technology that Zidus Kedela has licensed from somebody but the storage temperature issue is an absolutely clear distinction between the DNA vaccine and the RNA vaccine so far. However set against that are two points in the actual vaccination campaign context the first is this is a three dose vaccine it's not even a two dose vaccine so zero time four weeks later and eight weeks later is the current vaccination should you now you will recollect that even the two dose vaccines have been subject to an enormous amount of implementation logistics confusion and difficulties imagine just how much more trouble a three dose vaccine is going to be. So that's one issue a second issue is that is a little more interesting technologically this is a needle free vaccine yes but it's still an injected vaccine so is this an advantage yes it is in what sense is it an advantage well the needle causes more pain this is relatively less painful as an injection and number two the needle stick can introduce infections and this has a much lower chance of infection set against that it requires a specialized technology which means that if you if we are going to do this on a large scale then the additional ancillary supply chain and distribution chain and the logistics of an injector instrument for the vaccination campaign will need to be worried about so the three dose component and the injector are both going to be special difficulties exactly like the storage temperature and the painless vaccination are going to be advantages. The other interesting issue that I was looking at is when you look at the figures these are comparable to what I would say the Oxford AstraZeneca figures are in terms of protective immunity or whatever we can call it and it seems to be lower than the mRNA vaccines now are they really apple to apple comparable or are these figures just basically artifacts of the experiments that we are doing in terms of clinical trials. So I have been saying this for very many months to the point of boredom now that unless a planned comparison is made comparing numbers from independent trials really doesn't mean anything and let me use the Zidus Kedila example to give specific instances of that in the first place their trial has been over these past few months which means that in quite likely probability they that this vaccine has been dealing with a lot of the Delta variant. All the other vaccines were tested last year so this is pre Delta variant time number one number two if you look at the press release so far we are just dealing with press release information but if you look at the press release the press release says that mild symptomatic infection showed a 66 point something percent protective efficacy but it says without actually giving total numbers nonetheless it says there were no cases of moderate to severe infection in the vaccinated group which they in the press release are claiming as complete protection against moderate to severe illness. So if you look at all of this as far as I can see this vaccine falls in exactly the same category from these claims not from independent peer reviewed publications but from a publicity claim it falls in the same category as all the other vaccines broadly fall in unless we have actual comparison studies we won't be able to go much beyond that but I think we can be certain that severe illness disease and death will be as well protected against by this vaccine as by all the other vaccines which is an extremely useful addition to the COVID-19 portfolio of instruments. As we've discussed earlier that the what is the criteria for moderate what's the criteria for minor these are all issues of English which translated into concrete terms makes compare apple to apple comparison as Dr. Ratte said much more difficult so it is when you have a common set of protocols then you can really argue that yes we are comparing when it's a different set of protocols done by different sets of people with facing different conditions of the pandemic all of this makes these comparisons rather difficult all we can say is at the moment all vaccines protect against severe illness and possibility of death and at the moment hospitalization is what all of them seem to prevent quite successfully and that's what really matters to society not the fact that you might be ill and of course when we talk about being not severely ill that is not subjective in terms of that you're feeling bad really sick but in terms of the essentially what doctors would see in terms of your lung damage etc etc your oxygenation of the blood not that you are feeling sick as a dog which could still happen but that doesn't mean that you're seriously ill and as we know people also have different reaction to different symptoms some are laid down completely by a simple headache others can go around saying we are not we are not sick even when they're quite according to other medical criteria might be considered sick so these are all the reasons we make all the shall we say riders to our disc discussions here that when you compare you really cannot compare happen to happen in this particular way the other part of it this is 12 to 18 year olds make also that it could be given to them what makes this vaccine different from the other vaccines is it because they included children much earlier what is the reason that's all there is that's all that's really all there is keep in mind Praveer that this issue of safety that we've discussed repeatedly all the current platforms none of which are proper live vaccine platforms and are therefore safe safe for in all likelihood pretty much for everybody for the immunocompromised for the pregnant for the children for everybody nonetheless public policy should not depend on the immunologists speculations about likelihood of safety it should depend on actual evidence and data and children teenagers have been included and therefore it is appropriate to license it for children I'm I repeat again we've been saying in on this forum for quite some time that all the other vaccines should have been tested against these specialized risk groups and categories long back they are currently so being tested and as the data come in they will also be approved for children progressively younger and younger children so this is there is nothing special about this vaccine it's simply that the data seem to be available again we haven't actually seen the data the other part of it which is that scaling up theoretically that this I repeat theoretically is easier because you are not really looking at a co-vaccine kind of scenario where you're dealing with the actual active virus which you have to inactivate therefore your biosafety levels and all the care you need to take needs to be higher you have to see the virus really inactivated compared to this multiplication of the vaccine basically is relatively easier scaling it up is relatively easier and also handling it in biosafety terms is relatively easier so that gives us some advantage of thinking that it might be scaled up faster so you bring up an interesting point everything you said I agree with so I'm going to add a couple of caveats that might be of interest number one absolutely there are no biosafety issues with this vaccine unlike with growing the whole life virus as infectious virus and then inactivating it which is the co-vaccine situation but remember what I said about the three platforms the mRNA the DNA and the adenovirus the mRNA is really a rapid turnover manufacturer but it requires a great deal of specialized ancillary supply chains for at the industrial manufacturing level so for it to scale up as we've discussed earlier is more plausible in the global north than in the global south the adenovirus is completely plausible in the global south but you will remember that the adenoviral vaccine manufacturing batch technologies have had batch failures resulting in delays of supplies and the famous dispute between AstraZeneca and the European Union for example it was was one such delays in the Janssen Johnson Johnson vaccine also appeared to have been at some point because of batch failure delays this technology grows plasmid DNA in bacterial cultures rather than in actual human cell cultures which are industrially much more robust industrially there is much greater familiarity and therefore in a sense the plasmid DNA technology may I say we need to see actual evidence but may be plausibly far more robust than any of the other technologies for scale up now we still have to keep in mind that this is still a three-dose vaccine with with an injector and we have to keep in mind that what Zidus Kedila seems to be promising at the moment as a supply quantum is one crore doses and one crore doses is really just complete immunization for 30,000,000 people. Yes that's quite right they have of course promised that by December they'll be able to scale it up more but the numbers promised are quite modest given the scale of our needs so I was going to come to this point which you have already brought us that unless there is a really an investment of some kind which is larger than what they seem to be planning scaling up this is not going to be that simple apart from as you put it getting the supply chain working for a new instrument to inject the vaccine and for having three doses being able to coordinate all of that with the two months one zero 28 56 whatever that way it is done and that's not simple for a complex large vaccine campaign like ours which is where we seem still to be stuck the speed at which we are vaccinating does not seem to be commensurate the promise is made and by that as of date we are still below 10% in terms of people having received two doses thank you very much Satyajit for being with us explaining the details to our viewers and for those who watch news click regularly please do visit us also come and visit our website