Treatment of Coronavirus victims. Photo credit: The Straits Times

It was a research funded, in a proactive way for the past four years,  by Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology. And Migal Galilee Research Institute (MIGAL) researchers did not allow the funds to go down the drain. In other words, they have developed an effective vaccine against avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), which is, according to the Institutue’s website, to be adapted soon and create a human vaccine against COVID-19

As a result of this, Mr. Ofir Akunis, Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology, said with enthusiasm: “Congratulations to MIGAL on this exciting breakthrough. I am confident that there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat.” Thus, he has instructed the Director General of the Ministry of Science and Technology to “fast-track all approval processes with the goal of bringing the human vaccine to market as quickly as possible.”

The report has it further: “After 4 years of multi-disciplinary research funded by Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture, MIGAL has achieved a scientific breakthrough that will lead to the rapid creation of a vaccine against Coronavirus. This possibility was identified as a by-product of MIGAL’s development of a vaccine against IBV (Infectious Bronchitis Virus), a disease affecting poultry, whose effectiveness has been proven in pre-clinical trials carried out at the Volcani Institute. MIGAL has now made required genetic adjustments to adapt the vaccine to COVID-19, the human strain of coronavirus, and is working to achieve the safety approvals that will enable in-vivo testing, enable the initiation of production of a vaccine to counter the Coronavirus epidemic currently spreading throughout the world, which so far has claimed 2,666 lives.

“From research conducted at MIGAL, it has been found that the poultry coronavirus has high genetic similarity to the human COVID-19, and that it uses the same infection mechanism, a fact that increases the likelihood of achieving an effective human vaccine in a very short period of time.”

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