TEHRAN (Iran News) – The domestically-made Cov Pars Razi vaccine has received the license for a clinical trial on adolescents, Mehr news agency reported on Sunday.
The trial is scheduled to take place by the end of the current [Iranian calendar] year (March 20) with 210 volunteers, Mohammad Hossein Fallah, spokesman for the Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, said.
The third phase of the human test has been completed successfully being administered to 23,000 volunteers, Fallah said, adding, so far, no serious side effects have been reported after injecting the first dose and using the inhaled dose of the vaccine.
Booster dose studies are also completed. Recently, the vaccine has obtained the permit to be injected as a booster dose for all vaccines available in the country.
According to these studies, Cov Pars, as a booster dose, can increase the antibody 16 times among those who have received various vaccines such as Sinopharm, Barkat, AstraZeneca, and Sputnik.
Developed by the Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, Razi Cov Pars is the second Iranian-made vaccine that started the clinical trial on February 27, 2021.
The vaccine is protein-based, which employs recombinant versions of the spike protein and tutors the immune system against the virus by producing antibodies.
It is developed in 3 doses. The first two doses are injectable and the third dose is intranasal. The second dose of the vaccine will be injected into the volunteers 21 days later and the third dose will be inhaled 51 days later.
At the end of the second phase of clinical trials, Cov Pars proved 80 percent of the immunogenicity.
Razi Institute (affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture) is capable of producing 20 million doses of vaccine by the end of 2021, Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatinejad said.
A number of countries have requested to purchase the Cov Pars vaccine for COVID-19, and negotiations are underway to take the necessary measures for export, Fallah said in December 2021.
Domestically-made vaccines
Health Minister Bahram Einollahi has said five coronavirus vaccines have been so far produced domestically.
Made by researchers at the Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam, COVIRAN BARKAT was unveiled on December 29, 2020, and received the license for public use on June 14.
It proved effective against Indian strain, according to Hojjat Niki-Maleki, head of the information center of Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam.
Moreover, the Iranian-Australian Spikogen vaccine and Pastu Covac, developed jointly by the Pasteur Institute of Iran and Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, are other vaccines, which have received the emergency use license.
Iran is one of the few countries that has all vaccine production platforms, Mohammad Reza Shanehsaz, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said in June 2021.
Meanwhile, World Health Organization (WHO) representative to Iran Jaffar Hussain said in September 2021 that the Organization was collecting the necessary information for the registration and certification of Iranian-made coronavirus vaccines.
