A team of scientists from the Warsaw University of Technology is ready to test their Covid-19 vaccine on animals but the future of the project beyond animal testing remains unclear due to a lack of funds.
The scientists require a pharmaceutical company partner and additional financing to produce a viable vaccine. Professor Tomasz Ciach of the Warsaw University of Technology chemical engineering department and the leader of the team of scientists working on the vaccine, explained that while animal tests for the vaccine will be conducted because there is financing for that, the team will need a pharmaceutical company to help during the next stages, including testing on humans once it is deemed safe to proceed with that phase.
Ciach says his team of scientists need a pharmaceutical company partner in order to gain the necessary knowledge and experience needed to formulate vaccines and produce them on a mass scale. The company would also be able to provide insight into proper vaccine storage and transportation.
The professor also told the Polish Press Agency how the Polish vaccine was created. The work was initiated immediately after the pandemic appeared in early 2020. While powerful pharmaceutical companies had access to millions of dollars for their vaccine research, Ciach’s team had to rely on financing from the university, which is why it took longer to develop the vaccine.
Ciach also stated that there is still a place for new vaccines on the market and warned that access to foreign produced vaccines is not guaranteed. For example, there are still parts of Asia and Africa that cannot access vaccines. The European Union has also been criticized for its slow vaccine rollout.
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