Biotis Claims The Red And White Vaccine Is Compatible With The Newest COVID-19 Variant

President Director of Biotis Pharmaceutical Indonesia FX Sudirman/ANTARA

JAKARTA - President Director of PT Biotis Pharmaceutical Indonesia FX Sudirman claims the Red and White Vaccine is compatible in neutralizing the latest variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19.

"Later developers can adapt to the latest virus, because the last developer to appear will get a newer virus," said FX Sudirman as quoted by Antara, Friday, April 8.

Sudirman said vaccine products continue to develop to keep pace with technology and virus mutations that occur. This situation provides an advantage for vaccine developers who have recently emerged because they obtain more diverse virus variants to be researched and developed into vaccines.

According to Sudirman, most of the vaccines currently circulating in the world use platforms or viruses originating from the original Wuhan variant.

"The Red and White Vaccine is much more updated than the Wuhan variant, definitely more compatible with the recent pandemic," he said when asked whether the Red and White Vaccine was effective in neutralizing the latest mutation of the XE variant.

Meanwhile, the Head of the Red and White Vaccine Researcher at Airlangga University, Surabaya, Prof. Fedik Abdul Rantam is optimistic that the Red and White Vaccine can neutralize the latest SARS-CoV-2 which has relatively mild symptoms for infected patients.

"I am not afraid that our vaccine capability (Red and White Vaccine) cannot be neutralized. We have already challenged the Delta variant with more severe symptoms," he said.

Fedik said samples of the Delta variant were obtained from doctors to Unair staff who were previously infected, and then investigated. "Delta is a mix of South African, British and Indian variants, so that mix means the virus has infected people several times," he said.

Airlangga researchers are ready to develop a Red and White Vaccine which currently has an inactivated virus platform into a live-attenuated virus platform or an active virus that is attenuated but still capable of infecting the host with mild conditions.

Live attenuated virus can be produced by repeated viral cultures until the disease-causing agent loses the ability to cause disease.

"The new variant may later be designed for live attenuated vaccines that are attenuated, but still alive it's still good we look for mild ones for neutralization of others. If inactivated is a virus that is killed because the DNA/RNA in it is fragmented. Live attenuated is still alive but its genes are attenuated ," he said.

Meanwhile, the Merah Putih Vaccine officially entered phase 2 clinical trials today to be tested on human research subjects to measure vaccine effectiveness, efficacy and quality.

Phase II clinical trials will include 405 subjects who will be divided into three groups, namely a group that will receive a vaccine dose of 3 mcg and 5 mcg and a control vaccine which will be given two injections with an interval of 28 days.

Phase 3 clinical trials to determine the type of target age group are carried out in parallel with a booster trial or rolling booster dose starting May 28, 2022. It is targeted that the Red and White Vaccine will obtain an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from BPOM RI in August 2022.