The institute’s director told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the vaccine was being readied for testing in animals.
The Israel Institute for Biological Research director Prof. Shmuel Shapiro told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that significant progress has been made on the research and development of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, Channel 12 News reported.
According to Shapiro, the vaccine model is now being readied for testing in animals.
Animal testing is currently in an early stage, and will be followed by other more advanced stages of clinical testing, the Channel 12 report said. However, Shapiro added that many experiments that are successful in animals are not always successful when tested on human test subjects.
The Ness Ziona-based institute is one of several that are working hard on finding a vaccine and treatment methods to combat the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, which has infected around 5,000 Israelis at the time of writing.
Other promising research on vaccines by Israeli scientists include several emergency projects at labs at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, as well as the MIGAL – Galilee Research Institute in Kiryat Shmona.
Multiple labs abroad are also hard at work on finding a vaccine, including CanSino Biologics in China; Moderna and INOVIO Pharmaceuticals in the US; and CureVac and BioNTech in Germany.
Eytan Halon contributed to this report.
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