Mérida, Yucatán, (April 14, 2021).- In November of last year, The Lancet magazine published the first results. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York had succeeded in encoding the S protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which would be a first step in creating a vaccine for emerging economies. Yesterday, the investigation was presumed as an achievement of the Mexican government and baptized by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a “homeland vaccine.”
Now, once the preclinical tests in several animal species have been completed, as announced by María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, general director of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), the first tests are being sought in 90 healthy adults, at be carried out between April and May, so that – if the three remaining phases of clinical studies are positive – the biological one can be endorsed by the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) for its emergency use in December of this year, and even its commercialization was considered.
“These own developments are the basis for being able to regain sovereignty in this strategic aspect, which is the production of vaccines,” said the official.
However, the vaccine was not created in Mexico, the project was developed in the United States by Weina Sun, Florian Krammer, Adolfo García-Sastre, and Peter Palese. According to The Lancet, it would be planned as a low-cost vaccine and it was with the specialized veterinary firm, Laboratorio Avi-Mex SA de CV, with whom an agreement for the tests would have been signed.
But the fact was omitted during the conference of President López Obrador, where the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer, the Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell, as well as the director of the IPN, Arturo Reyes Sandoval also participated.
“It is very difficult to get to this point,” added Álvarez-Buylla.
15 million pesos were invested from the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation and the Ministry of Foreign Relations, as well as 135 million pesos from Conacyt, with “savings of up to 855%.”
The President said that the name of the vaccine would be inspired by the poet Ramón López Velarde, because in the so-called neoliberal period “they stopped talking about the homeland.” “Homeland, sovereignty, were anachronisms, it was synonymous with backwardness, ‘why talk about the homeland in a globalized world?'”, Emphasized the Executive.
