*A Canadian drugmaker claims the first plant-based COVID-19 vaccine is 75% more effective against preventing the Delta variant.
Medicago is a pioneer and global leader in developing and producing plant-based vaccines and therapeutics, per the company’s website. The new plant vaccine “was 75.3% effective against the variant when enhanced with GlaxoSmithKline’s booster,” the New York Post writes.
“These are encouraging results given data were obtained in an environment with no ancestral virus circulating. The global COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to show new facets with the current dominance of the Delta variant, upcoming Omicron, and other variants likely to follow,” GSK Chief Global Health Officer Thomas Breuer said in a statement.
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Here’s more from NYP:
The vaccine employs a technology known as virus-like particles produced in plant cells, which mimic the structure of the coronavirus, but contain no genetic material from it. The vaccine’s overall efficacy was 71% against all variants of the coronavirus, except Omicron, which was not known to be circulating yet when the study was underway.
Medicago and GlaxoSmithKline reportedly conducted a late-stage study that involved over 24,000 participants ages 18 and over in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, per the report.
Medicago intends to seek regulatory approval from Health Canada for the plant-based COVID-19 vaccine.
Meanwhile, many people have noted that a plant-based vaccine sounds like an oxymoron. Check out the video above to learn more about how plant-based vaccines are made.
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