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Subject: Vaccines

  • Typhoid control needs more vaccine, less antibiotic

    Typhoid control needs more vaccine, less antibiotic

    Why in the News

    Typhoid cases in India are mounting without attracting the attention that influenza and swine flu currently draw, and every suspected case becomes a trigger for inappropriate or unnecessarily broad-spectrum antibiotic use. The disease is bacterial and vaccine preventable, yet it continues to be diagnosed imperfectly and treated empirically. The reason is the absence of a simple, reliable and accessible diagnostic test, which leaves the clinician with suspicion rather than confirmation. The tension is that the same empirical prescribing that substitutes for a diagnosis also generates the antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella typhi that makes future typhoid harder to treat, and it destroys the case data needed to see that resistance building.

    What is the typhoid conjugate vaccine?

    1. What it is: The typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) links the Vi capsular sugar coat of Salmonella typhi to a carrier protein. The conjugation produces a durable immune response, including in children under two, which the older unconjugated vaccine did not.
    2. India’s manufacturing position: India produced the world’s first World Health Organization (WHO) prequalified typhoid conjugate vaccine, Typbar-TCV, in 2017. Additional Indian products have achieved WHO prequalification since then.
    3. Where WHO places it: The WHO has prioritised introduction of the vaccine in countries carrying a high typhoid burden or high levels of antimicrobial resistance.

    Why does typhoid get treated without being diagnosed?

    1. A single Widal test settles nothing: The Widal test measures antibodies against Salmonella typhi, and one result is not sufficient to establish a diagnosis of acute typhoid.
    2. Endemicity corrupts the reading: In an endemic country such as India, background antibodies and previous exposure or vaccination make the result difficult to interpret. In routine practice a positive Widal result may still be treated as confirmation.
    3. The laboratory standard is only half sensitive: Blood culture remains the conventional laboratory standard. The latest WHO typhoid guidance puts the sensitivity of a single blood culture at only around 55 to 60 per cent.
    4. What the yield depends on: Sensitivity is influenced by the volume of blood collected and, critically, by prior exposure to antimicrobials.
    5. The vicious cycle this creates: A patient develops prolonged fever and takes an antibiotic before seeking care. The blood culture drawn afterwards returns negative, and the clinician responds to unresolved suspicion by escalating or changing the antibiotic.

    What does empirical treatment cost beyond the individual patient?

    1. Every course adds selection pressure: India already faces increasing resistance in Salmonella typhi, and each unnecessary antibiotic course creates additional selection pressure on the organism.
    2. Every missed case blanks the record: A patient treated without microbiological confirmation never enters the resistance data, so the surveillance that should guide prescribing is undermined by the prescribing itself.
    3. Breadth compounds the damage: The response to diagnostic uncertainty is a broader spectrum agent, which acts on organisms far beyond the one suspected.

    Why is a vaccine preventable disease being fought with antibiotics?

    1. The capability is not the constraint: The scientific and manufacturing capability exists and the vaccine exists. What remains inadequate is the scale and the rigour of its use.
    2. India is the case WHO describes: India is one of the countries where the combination of disease burden and resistance makes the case for typhoid vaccination compelling.
    3. Vaccination does not displace the basics: It cannot be treated as a substitute for clean water, sanitation, food safety or better diagnostics. It has to be one component of an integrated typhoid control strategy.

    What would an integrated typhoid control strategy require?

    1. Surveillance triggered by the case rise: Reports of increasing typhoid should themselves trigger strengthened surveillance. Hospitals and laboratories should systematically document suspected and culture confirmed cases, antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and prior antibiotic exposure.
    2. Diagnostic stewardship inside antimicrobial stewardship: Blood cultures should ideally be obtained before antibiotics are started, with adequate blood volume and appropriate laboratory practices.
    3. A test that works at the point of care: India needs investment in a better point of care or rapid diagnostic test for typhoid.
    4. A settled place for the vaccine: The position of the typhoid conjugate vaccine in the public health strategy needs to be revisited rather than left to individual prescribing decisions.

    Challenges to scaling the typhoid conjugate vaccine

    1. It sits outside the routine immunisation schedule: The vaccine is not part of the Universal Immunisation Programme, so uptake depends on the private market and on paying households. Eg. Coverage is concentrated in urban private paediatric practice rather than in the dense settlements where typhoid transmission is highest. Fix. Introduce it in a phased manner in high burden urban districts first, with the introduction decision anchored to culture confirmed case data.
    2. The vaccine does not cover the whole disease: Enteric fever is also caused by Salmonella paratyphi A, against which the conjugate vaccine gives no protection. Eg. A vaccinated patient presenting with prolonged fever still requires the same diagnostic workup. Fix. Fund development of a bivalent conjugate covering both organisms alongside scale up of the existing product.
    3. Introduction cannot be measured without a denominator: Without culture confirmed case counts there is no baseline against which to judge whether the vaccine reduced disease. Eg. Resistance data in India is heavily skewed towards tertiary hospitals rather than the community. Fix. Make enteric fever notifiable with mandatory laboratory reporting so introduction and impact are both measurable.
    4. Catch-up campaigns are the expensive part: A single dose given from six months of age is cheap, and a mass campaign across older cohorts is not. Eg. The cold chain and session load of a campaign compete directly with routine immunisation days. Fix. Attach the catch-up to existing school health programmes rather than running a parallel delivery system.

    Conclusion

    India has the vaccine and the manufacturing base to use it widely. What it does not have is a count of who actually has typhoid, because most cases are treated on symptoms and never confirmed in a laboratory. That missing count is exactly what would tell the government where to vaccinate first and whether it worked. The marker to watch is whether the typhoid conjugate vaccine enters the Universal Immunisation Programme, or stays held up waiting on data the country has not begun collecting.

    What is Antimicrobial Resistance?

    1. About: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve and stop responding to medicines that once treated them. It is often termed the silent pandemic.
    2. The One Health scope: Human medicine, animal husbandry and the environment form one reservoir, since resistant organisms move between them through food, water and waste.

    Laws and Rules Governing Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940: The parent statute regulating manufacture and sale of medicines in India.
    2. Schedule H1: Requires a prescription and a sale register for listed antibiotics and second line drugs.
    3. Ban on irrational fixed dose combinations: The government banned 156 irrational fixed dose combinations in 2024, several being antibiotic cocktails with no scientific basis.

    Government Initiatives for Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. National Action Plan on AMR 2.0 (2025 to 2029): Sets sectoral targets across human health, animal health and the environment.
    2. Red Line Campaign: Marks prescription-only antibiotic packs with a red vertical stripe for buyer identification.
    3. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) AMR Surveillance Network: Collects susceptibility data from tertiary care hospitals.

    Key Facts about Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. Consumption pattern: 59 per cent of antibiotics consumed in India in 2022 were in the WHO Watch category, meant to be used sparingly.
    2. Animal use ranking: India is the fourth largest consumer of antibiotics for animals, with an 82 per cent rise projected by 2030.
    3. Newborn burden: More than 50,000 newborn deaths a year in India are attributed to resistant sepsis.

    Challenges in Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. Antibiotics still move over the counter: Retail enforcement of the prescription requirement is weak, so a course is bought like a painkiller. Eg. The pill popping habit widened after the COVID-19 pandemic, with antibiotics taken for viral illness. Fix. Make the Schedule H1 register a digital point of sale entry so it can be audited rather than inspected.
    2. Manufacturing effluent seeds resistance in rivers: Untreated effluent from drug production enters water bodies and selects for resistant organisms outside any clinic. Eg. The Musi river near Hyderabad shows antibiotic levels a thousand times above safe limits. Fix. Tie public procurement preference to plants certified for zero liquid discharge.
    3. Farm use is a growth strategy, not a treatment: Antibiotics are given routinely in poultry and aquaculture to accelerate weight gain, not to treat disease. Eg. Shrimp samples have shown up to 100 per cent ampicillin resistance. Fix. Subsidise animal vaccines and enforce farm to fork traceability so residue traces to a producer.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020] What is the importance of using Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines in India? (1) These vaccines are effective against pneumonia as well as meningitis and sepsis. (2) Dependence on antibiotics that are not effective against drug-resistant bacteria can be reduced. (3) These vaccines have no side effects and cause no allergic reactions. Select the correct answer using the code given below: (a) 1 only (b) 1 and 2 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 ANSWER: (b)”

  • The personalised vaccine that could cut skin cancer death risk

    The personalised vaccine that could cut skin cancer death risk

    Why in the News

    A new personalised cancer vaccine, intismeran, administered alongside the immunotherapy drug Keytruda, has been shown in Phase 3 results to reduce the risk of death from the recurrence and spread of skin cancer.

    How does intismeran work?

    1. Step one, read the tumour: The therapy begins by identifying the mutations, called neoantigens, in a sample of the patient’s own tumour.
    2. Step two, build the instruction set: A vaccine is then made of synthetically developed messenger RNA (mRNA), a single stranded molecule that carries genetic instructions from DNA in the cell nucleus and tells the cell which proteins to make. Each treatment consists of mRNA coding for 34 such neoantigens.
    3. Step three, administer and translate: Once administered, the body generates these proteins from the mRNA instructions.
    4. Step four, present to the immune system: The body then presents those proteins to the immune system, which is trained to recognise them as belonging to the cancer.

    Why must a cancer vaccine be personalised?

    1. Neoantigens exist only on cancer cells: Neoantigens are proteins found only on the cancerous cells, which the body’s immune system can be trained to recognise.
    2. They differ from patient to patient: These neoantigens vary from person to person, so they become an identifier for that individual’s cancer and cannot be mass produced as a single formulation.
    3. The principle is the same as any vaccine: A vaccine for an infectious disease contains the antigen from a pathogen, the proteins or lipids that train the immune system to recognise and fight it, and this therapy contains cancer neoantigens instead.
    4. The benefit is immunological memory: The cancer’s fingerprint enters the immune system’s memory, so if the cancer returns the body can recognise it immediately and mount a response, prolonging recurrence free survival.
    5. A decade of work behind one result: Work on this approach has run for around a decade, and this is the first clinical breakthrough.

    What did the Phase 3 study find?

    1. Death risk from recurrence fell: When the vaccine was given with Keytruda, the risk of death owing to recurrence of skin cancer went down by 49 per cent.
    2. Death risk from spread fell further: The risk of death owing to the cancer spreading went down by 59 per cent.
    3. The comparison arm matters: Both results are measured against treatment with Keytruda alone, not against no treatment.
    4. The comparison arm is already strong: Keytruda (pembrolizumab, a checkpoint inhibitor that blocks the PD-1 receptor cancer cells use to switch off the immune response against them) has over the years been shown to be much more effective in treating certain cancers than traditional chemotherapy, so the gain sits on top of an established benchmark.
    5. Side effects were mild: The most common side effects noted in the study were fatigue, injection site pain and chills.

    What does this mean for India?

    1. Reason one, the disease is rare here: Melanoma is one of the most common types of cancer in the caucasian population, and is not commonly seen among Indians.
    2. The share is a fraction of a per cent: Globocan, short for Global Cancer Observatory, an online platform that maintains cancer statistics, shows that melanoma accounts for only 0.26 per cent of all cancer cases in India and 0.17 per cent of deaths.
    3. Reason two, cost: Most patients in India are unable to afford Keytruda even with patient assistance programmes, and a combination therapy compounds a barrier that already exists for the immunotherapy alone.
    4. Access to immunotherapy is already narrow: A real world study from Tata Memorial Hospital showed that only 1.6 per cent of the patients who need such immunotherapy are able to access it.

    Challenges to personalised mRNA cancer vaccines

    1. Every dose is a separate manufacturing run: The vaccine must be sequenced, designed and produced per patient, so the process cannot be batched and the turnaround competes with tumour progression. Eg. Each treatment encodes 34 neoantigens specific to one person’s tumour. Fix. Build automated, closed-system manufacturing units co-located with cancer centres, on the model already used for cell therapy production.
    2. Cost scales with individualisation: A therapy that cannot be mass produced carries no volume discount, so the price gap over a standard drug widens rather than narrows with adoption. Eg. Even the standard companion immunotherapy reaches only 1.6 per cent of Indian patients who need it. Fix. Negotiate outcome linked pricing, where payment is tied to recurrence free survival achieved rather than to doses supplied.
    3. Cold chain requirements restrict reach: mRNA products require ultra-low temperature storage and transport, which most Indian district level oncology facilities do not have. Eg. Covid-19 mRNA vaccines were never widely deployed in India partly for this reason. Fix. Extend the cold chain built for the universal immunisation programme with ultra-low temperature capacity at regional cancer centres before such therapies are introduced.
    4. Tumours can escape the target: Cancer cells can lose the targeted antigen over time, which is the known failure mode of antigen directed immunotherapy. Eg. Relapse through antigen escape is documented in CAR-T cell therapy for blood cancers. Fix. Design vaccines against multiple conserved neoantigens and pair them with checkpoint inhibitors, so escape from one target does not end the response.
    5. Regulatory pathways assume a fixed product: Approval systems are built to assess an identical formulation across a trial population, while each dose here differs by design. Eg. India’s biotechnology approvals are already split across the Department of Biotechnology, the drug regulator and the environment ministry. Fix. Create a platform approval route that licenses the manufacturing process and the design algorithm rather than each individual product.
    6. The evidence is disease specific: The result is established for melanoma alone, and benefit in the cancers that dominate India’s burden is not demonstrated. Eg. Melanoma is 0.26 per cent of Indian cancer cases while breast, oral and cervical cancers account for the bulk. Fix. Prioritise Indian participation in trials of the same platform for oral, breast and cervical cancers, so approval evidence is generated on the local disease profile.

    Conclusion

    A personalised mRNA vaccine has for the first time produced a meaningful clinical benefit in cancer, cutting the risk of death from recurrence by 49 per cent and from spread by 59 per cent when added to an existing immunotherapy. The result validates the principle that a therapy can be built against each patient’s own tumour mutations rather than against a disease in general. For India the immediate impact is limited, because melanoma is rare here and the companion drug reaches under two per cent of the patients who need it. The question that remains open is whether the platform is extended to the cancers that actually dominate India’s disease burden.

    “[2022, GS3, 15 marks] What is the basic principle behind vaccine development? How do vaccines work? What approaches were adopted by the Indian vaccine manufacturers to produce COVID-19 vaccines?”

  • Can a 100-Year-Old Vaccine Train the Brain’s Immune System?

    Why in the News

    A study gave two doses of the Bacillus Calmette Guerin vaccine a month apart to 23 older adults and tracked blood and cerebrospinal fluid for a year, finding monocytes switching on genes for a faster immune response. This is evidence of trained immunity operating within the central nervous system. The tension is between a cheap, decades old vaccine with a large safety record and a study too small to establish clinical benefit.

    Note: Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is more than 100 years old. It was first given to a human on July 18, 1921. Two French scientists, Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin, made the vaccine to stop tuberculosis (TB).

    What is trained immunity?

    1. About: Trained immunity is the capacity of innate immune cells to mount a stronger response to a later, unrelated challenge after an initial exposure, through lasting changes in gene expression.
    2. How it differs from adaptive immunity: Adaptive immunity is pathogen specific and mediated by lymphocytes. Trained immunity is non specific and mediated by innate cells such as monocytes.
    3. Mechanism: The change operates through epigenetic and metabolic reprogramming rather than through antibody memory.
    4. Why BCG: BCG is the best documented inducer of trained immunity, which is why it is used to test the effect.

    What did the study actually find?

    1. Sample and design: 23 older adults were enrolled, roughly half with cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease, given two BCG doses a month apart.
    2. Immune change: Monocytes switched on genes associated with a faster immune response.
    3. Functional test: Monocytes responded more strongly to lipopolysaccharide, a standard bacterial stimulus, confirming a functional and not merely transcriptional change.
    4. Amyloid movement: Amyloid fell in cerebrospinal fluid and rose in blood among participants without established Alzheimer’s, and not among those with it.
    5. Location of the effect: The change was detected in the central nervous system compartment, which is the finding’s principal claim.

    What are the study’s stated limits?

    1. Sample size: 23 participants is too small to detect a clinical effect.
    2. No control arm: The study had no placebo group, so observed changes cannot be separated from natural variation.
    3. No cognitive change: Cognitive scores were unchanged over the year.
    4. Directional ambiguity: Amyloid shifting from cerebrospinal fluid to blood is consistent with clearance and is not proof of clearance.

    Why does a cheap vaccine matter for this disease?

    1. Cost comparison: BCG is inexpensive and carries decades of safety data, against anti amyloid drugs that are expensive and require infusion infrastructure.
    2. Existing supply: BCG is already manufactured at scale for tuberculosis immunisation.
    3. Repurposing precedent: A five year BCG cohort in type 1 diabetes established the model of testing the vaccine for a non tuberculosis indication.
    4. Underlying hypothesis: Chronic low grade inflammation with ageing, described as inflammaging, is implicated in neurodegeneration, and trained immunity is one route to modulating it.

    Challenges in translating this finding

    1. Blood brain barrier access: Demonstrating that a peripheral vaccine changes central nervous system immunity requires invasive sampling. e.g. the cerebrospinal fluid collection this study depended on.
    2. Amyloid hypothesis contestation: Amyloid reduction has not reliably produced cognitive benefit. e.g. the modest clinical effect sizes reported for approved anti amyloid antibodies.
    3. Trial duration: Neurodegeneration progresses over years, so trials must run long. e.g. the five year design of the BCG type 1 diabetes cohort.
    4. Vaccine supply competition: Diverting BCG to a new indication competes with tuberculosis immunisation demand. e.g. periodic global BCG supply shortages affecting national immunisation programmes.
    5. Strain variability: BCG substrains differ in immunological potency, complicating replication. e.g. the differing efficacy estimates across BCG trials attributed to substrain variation.
    6. Diagnostic access: Identifying preclinical Alzheimer’s requires biomarker testing unavailable at scale in India. e.g. limited availability of cerebrospinal fluid and amyloid imaging assays outside tertiary centres.

    Conclusion

    The study’s contribution is the demonstration that trained immunity can be detected within the central nervous system, which extends a peripheral immunology concept into neurology. It establishes a mechanism, not a treatment, since 23 participants without a control arm and with unchanged cognition cannot support a clinical claim. The next milestone is a randomised controlled trial with a placebo arm and cognitive endpoints over a multi year horizon.

    Back2Basics: Bacillus Calmette Guerin vaccine

    1. A live attenuated vaccine derived from Mycobacterium bovis, first administered in humans in 1921.
    2. Used primarily against severe childhood forms of tuberculosis, including tuberculous meningitis and miliary tuberculosis.
    3. Included in India’s Universal Immunisation Programme, given at birth or as early as possible thereafter.
    4. Provides limited protection against pulmonary tuberculosis in adults, which is why a new tuberculosis vaccine remains a research priority.
    5. Also used as an intravesical immunotherapy for non muscle invasive bladder cancer.
    6. Manufactured in India at the BCG Vaccine Laboratory, Chennai, among other facilities.

    Government Initiatives

    1. National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme: Targets tuberculosis elimination, covering diagnosis, treatment and nutritional support for patients.
    2. Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana: Provides direct benefit transfer for nutritional support to tuberculosis patients on treatment.
    3. Universal Immunisation Programme: Provides BCG and other vaccines free of cost, targeting infants and pregnant women.
    4. National Programme for Health Care of the Elderly: Provides dedicated geriatric health services including cognitive and mental health care.
    5. Indian Council of Medical Research clinical trial network: Supports multicentre trials, including for tuberculosis vaccine candidates.

    Way Forward

    1. Run a controlled trial: Replicate the finding with a placebo arm and a sample large enough to detect a cognitive effect.
    2. Standardise the substrain: Fix the BCG substrain across trial sites so results are comparable.
    3. Protect immunisation supply: Ensure any repurposing trial does not draw on doses allocated to childhood tuberculosis immunisation.
    4. Expand biomarker capacity: Build cerebrospinal fluid and blood biomarker testing capacity so preclinical cases can be identified for trial enrolment.
    5. Fund domestic replication: Support an Indian cohort, since India carries both the largest BCG immunised population and a rapidly ageing one.

    “[2022, GS3, 15 marks] What is the basic principle behind vaccine development? How do vaccines work? What approaches were adopted by the Indian vaccine manufacturers to produce COVID-19 vaccines?”

  • Viruses don’t respect borders: the case for timely, fair global vaccine access for zoonotic outbreaks

    Why in the News?

    An International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) scientist has argued that timely and fair global vaccine access for zoonotic outbreaks, such as Ebola, Nipah and hantavirus, requires academia-industry partnerships and a shared risk funding model. This is because such vaccines are not commercially attractive to manufacturers.

    Why are zoonotic outbreak vaccines commercially unattractive?

    1. Small, unpredictable markets: Ebola, Nipah and hantavirus outbreaks are episodic and geographically concentrated, giving manufacturers no stable, predictable market to justify sustained investment.
    2. High development cost, low return: Vaccine development costs remain similar regardless of market size, so a vaccine with a small addressable market offers manufacturers a poor return relative to vaccines for widespread diseases.
    3. Outbreak timing mismatch: Vaccine demand spikes only during an active outbreak, while development must happen years in advance, a mismatch that discourages manufacturers from investing ahead of demonstrated demand.

    What would a shared risk funding model change?

    1. Risk redistribution: A shared risk funding model spreads the financial risk of vaccine development across academia, industry and public funders, rather than leaving it entirely on a manufacturer’s commercial judgment.
    2. Academia-industry partnership: Academic institutions like ICGEB can carry early stage research risk, handing over a de-risked candidate for industry to scale, lowering the barrier for private investment.
    3. Access consequence: A funding model that does not depend on commercial viability alone can keep resulting vaccines priced for equitable global access rather than for cost recovery in a niche market.

    Conclusion

    The central idea is that zoonotic outbreak vaccines fail a commercial viability test that has nothing to do with their public health importance. A shared risk funding model, built on academia-industry partnership, is the mechanism proposed to close that gap between epidemic risk and market incentive.

    Back2Basics

    International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB): An intergovernmental organisation with a component in New Delhi, conducting research in genetic engineering and biotechnology, including vaccine and infectious disease research.

    PYQ Relevance

    [UPSC 2022] What is the basic principle behind vaccine development? How do vaccines work? What approaches were adopted by the Indian vaccine manufacturers to produce COVID-19 vaccines?

    Linkage: The PYQ examines the scientific principles of vaccine development and the challenges in developing vaccines for emerging infectious diseases. The article explains why vaccines for zoonotic diseases require shared-risk funding and academia-industry partnerships to overcome weak commercial incentives and ensure equitable access.

  • What is the basic principle behind vaccine development? How do vaccines work? What approaches were adopted by the Indian vaccine manufacturers to produce COVID-19 vaccines?

    Vaccines are biological preparations that provide immunity against infectious diseases by training the immune system to fight pathogens. India has emerged as a global vaccine hub, supplying over 60% of global vaccine demand through indigenous vaccine development.

    Basic Principle Behind Vaccine Development

    Mimicking natural infection: Vaccines imitate infections to safely activate the body’s immune defenses.

    Antigen as the key component: Vaccines contain antigens that trigger antibody production. These may include:

    Weakened or killed pathogens

    Pathogen fragments or genetic material

    Inactivated bacterial toxins (toxoids)

    Types of vaccine platform:

    Live-attenuated vaccines: Use weakened living pathogens, providing strong immunity but posing risks to immunocompromised individuals. Eg- MMR and Chickenpox vaccines.

    Non-live vaccines: Use killed pathogens or subunits, making them safer but requiring booster doses due to shorter immunity. Eg- DTaP vaccine.

    Addressing viral mutations: Vaccines for rapidly mutating viruses are periodically updated to maintain protection. Eg- Seasonal flu vaccines and COVID-19 boosters.

    How Vaccines Work?

    Immune system activation: Vaccine antigens are recognized as foreign threats, activating white blood cells to multiply and respond.

    Antibody production: White blood cells produce antibodies that specifically identify and neutralize the pathogen.

    Immunological memory: After the antigen is removed, memory cells remain in the body, providing long-term immunity.

    Protection against disease: On future exposure, memory cells rapidly produce antibodies, preventing severe illness or death.

    Approaches Adopted by Indian Vaccine Manufacturers for COVID-19

    Inactivated whole-virion platform (Covaxin): Bharat Biotech and Indian Council of Medical Research developed a vaccine using chemically inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus to safely trigger immunity.

    Viral vector platform (Covishield): Serum Institute of India(SII) used a harmless chimpanzee adenovirus carrying spike protein genetic code to stimulate immune response.

    Recombinant protein subunit platform (Covovax & Corbevax): SII and Biological E developed vaccines using purified spike proteins with adjuvants to induce antibodies.

    DNA plasmid platform (ZyCoV-D): Zydus Cadila developed the world’s first human DNA vaccine using plasmid DNA delivered through a needle-free injector.

    mRNA platform (GEMCOVAC-19): Gennova Biopharmaceuticals developed an mRNA vaccine using lipid nanoparticles to deliver spike-protein instructions safely into cells.

    India’s diverse COVID-19 vaccine response-from inactivated vaccines to DNA and mRNA platforms-has strengthened its role as the Pharmacy of the World. Expanding indigenous R&D and ensuring timely immunization remain vital for achieving United Nations SDG 3(Good Health and Well-being)

  • What is the importance of using Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines in India

    What is the importance of using Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines in India?
    (1) These vaccines are effective against pneumonia as well as meningitis and sepsis.
    (2) Dependence on antibiotics that are not effective against drug-resistant bacteria can
    be reduced.
    (3) These vaccines have no side effects and cause no allergic reactions.
    Select the correct answer using the code given below:

  • With reference to recent developments regarding ‘Recombinant Vector Vaccine,’ consider the following statements

    With reference to recent developments regarding ‘Recombinant Vector Vaccine,’ consider the following statements:

    1. Genetic engineering is applied in the development of these vaccines.
    2. Bacteria and viruses are used as vectors.
    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  • In the context of vaccines manufactured to prevent COVID-19 pandemic, consider the following statements

    In the context of vaccines manufactured to prevent COVID-19 pandemic, consider the following statements :
    1. The Serum Institute of India produced COVID-19 vaccine named Covishield using mRNA platform.
    2. Sputnik V vaccine is manufactured using vector based platform.
    3. COVAXIN is an inactivated pathogen based vaccine.
    Which of the statements given above are correct?