As Europe currently faces a 5th wave of Covid-19, a British company has developed a vaccine that does without traditional injections. Indeed, it is a question of a patch with microneedles to be placed on the skin. According to the researchers, this new type of vaccine would allow much longer immunity.
The Delta variant has been talked about a lot over the past few weeks. Indeed, the European continent has recorded 2.5 million cases and nearly 30,000 deaths for a week . According to the WHO, this fifth wave of Covid-19 could cause no less than 700,000 deaths adding to the 1.5 million deaths since the start of the pandemic. It must be said that the Delta variant is very contagious and has reduced effectiveness by 40% vaccines against 60% for other variants.
The goal of vaccines is to reduce disease transmission and avoid serious forms. In France, people over 65 can receive a third dose of vaccine and soon, this will be the case for people over 50. However, many people of all ages are not yet vaccinated. Some fall into the "antivax" category, but others are belenophobic, i.e. plagued by needle phobia. For the latter, the British company Emergex seems to have a solution, as The Guardian explains in an article of November 15, 2021. It has indeed developed a skin vaccine in the form of a patch , a bit like those to fight against smoking.
According to Emergex, the microneedle skin vaccine should make it possible to vaccinate more people, including belenophobes. However, the main interest seems to lie elsewhere:the duration of immunity is ten years or more . In addition, this vaccine also makes it possible to fight against viral mutations, i.e. the appearance of new variants.
This vaccine called T Cell Skin Patch is aptly named. Remember that T cells (or T lymphocytes) represent a group of immune cells capable of destroy the cells that the virus infects . Traditional vaccines, on the other hand, generate an immune response through the creation of antibodies, a response that unfortunately diminishes over time.
In Switzerland, the health authorities have given the green light for first clinical tests of the T Cell Skin Patch at the University of Lausanne. Of 26 patients, some will receive a low dose and others a higher dose. Since the results are expected for the summer of 2022, there is no question of any commercialization yet. However, this is a serious lead towards an alternative to traditional vaccines.
Robin Cohen, Chief Commercial Officer of Emergex, announced that this is the first time ever that a regulatory body has approved a Covid vaccine for clinical trials including the goal is to generate a targeted T cell response in the absence of an antibody response.
