The National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) yesterday said that tests of its DNA vaccine against COVID-19 on hamsters was promising, with clinical trials likely to start later this year.
The institute on July 1 chose the DNA vaccine among its four vaccine development platforms as its main focus and started animal testing, Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology director Liao Ching-len (廖經倫) said.
“The vaccine has shown the effect of significantly reducing the viral load and decreasing the damage that the virus caused to the lungs” of hamsters, he said.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
“With the DNA vaccine, we deliver genetic information [a plasmid containing the DNA sequence encoding the antigens against COVID-19] into the human body, and when it enters the cells, the cells produce spike proteins,” Liao said.
He said it is similar to the actual situation of when someone is infected by the virus, stimulating the body’s immune response.
In animal testing, the vaccine successfully stimulated the production of neutralizing antibodies, blocking the viral infection, he said.
Hamsters that did not receive the vaccine lost weight and general vitality, and their viral load remained high, while those that received the vaccine did not lose much weight or vitality and their viral load dropped significantly to 1 percent of the original volume, Liao said.
He said the research team was “amazed” at the results of animal testing.
“We hope the experiments can proceed to the first phase of a clinical trial in the fourth quarter this year, finish the third phase of the clinical trial by the third quarter next year, and hit the market as soon as possible,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater