What happened to the “invitaliano” vaccine?

Remember the Reithera vaccine, pompously presented at the press conference as the Italian solution to immunization against SARS-CoV-2, on which, however, many doubts of all sorts, from scientific to administrative ones, until the rejection of the operation. of public funding received by the Court of Auditors?

Well: a preprint has just been filed, which finally makes known the data and results obtained during the phase 2 study conducted in 2021, the one that should have demonstrated the efficacy and usefulness of the GRAD-CoV2 vaccine based on the use of a gorilla adenovirus . The vaccine was well tolerated and immunogenic, and in many ways similar to the Astra Zeneca vaccine based on chimpanzee adenovirus from the point of view of both antibody induction and cell-mediated response.

On the other hand, the efficacy data are unavailable, because the clinical trial, for reasons not very well understood in the text, was made non-blind starting from day 57 of the trial, making it impossible to transition to phase 3 of the study and therefore the real evaluation of the efficacy of the product. On the other hand, subjects enrolled in the study, understandably, proceeded to inject themselves as soon as possible a dose of a vaccine whose efficacy was established; this is the result of the late development of the Reithera vaccine, compared to other products, which made it difficult to ethically support the study in the presence of the pandemic and of products already proven to be effective, as was previously reported.

The authors, correctly, expect that the product of which today we finally have some more data, will not be of any efficacy against Omicron, and in fact write that today it “has a limited or no value in the light of Omicron’s prevalence”; let’s say, therefore, that from this point of view the investment, public and private, has turned out to be a complete failurenot because from a scientific point of view it was not valid, but because of the known vicissitudes that led to its belated and arbitrary selection, its scarce and arbitrary funding and, in short, because of the typical way of doing politics, which believes it is possible to take shortcuts, making arbitrary choices and abandoning all transparency, in order to obtain various advantages for oneself and for one’s associates even when it comes to obtaining a vaccine.

However, despite the outcome of this very bad story, we can find in the conclusion of the work at least a glimmer of positivity, rightly claimed by the researchers who committed themselves to the project. The type of vector used, a monkey adenovirus like that of Astra Zeneca, has undoubted advantages in terms of flexibility, cost and potential in the development of new vaccines. The failed project of the “invitaliano vaccine” has at least allowed us to test a technological and conceptual platform that could prove to be very useful for our country, if instead of discarding it or worse than abandoning it in the clutches of politics, we thought of a serious development over a period of medium duration.

Of course, it is not possible to think that a small company, already severely tested by the reckless political management of the COVID-19 project, can get back on track by itself; but how many small Italian companies are there, with proprietary technology, useful for producing the vaccines that could be of use tomorrow?

We will have to depend forever on bargaining with entities from other countries, or, perhaps taking an example from countries like Cuba and the multiplicity of vaccines they have developed, Wouldn’t it be time for the public in certain strategic sectors not to regain a leading role, planning for the future instead of chasing others after trouble?