Victoria takes huge step towards Australia’s first local mRNA vaccine

One state has taken a huge step towards Australia’s first locally made mRNA Covid-19 vaccine with clinical trials set to start this year.

Victorian officials say they’ve taken a big step in producing what could be Australia’s first locally made mRNA coronavirus vaccine.

Medical Research Minister Jaala Pulford said the government had provided $5m in funding to the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences to produce a vaccine that will now head to a clinical trial.

It will be Australia’s first local mRNA Covid-19 vaccine candidate to reach Phase 1 clinical trials.

“Vaccines are the most straightforward path through this pandemic,” Ms Pulford said on Sunday.

The trial, which is scheduled to begin in October and involve 150 patients, is expected to receive the first results by mid-2022.

“It will give an early indication of safety and the responses … from individual patients fairly early on in the trial, perhaps within the first three months we’ll have a pretty good idea, because there are two doses of vaccines,” Monash University professor Colin Pouton said.

Medical Research Minister Jaala Pulford announced that a locally developed vaccine would head to clinical trials later this year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Paul Jeffers

The announcement was part of the state government’s previously announced $50m fund to develop a Victorian-based mRNA vaccine manufacturing capability.

The trial will be run in conjunction with the Doherty Institute.

Professor Pouton said the vaccine differed from existing vaccines because it was focused on eliminating variants of the virus, not just the Wuhan strain.

“Both the Doherty vaccine and (the Monash Institute) mRNA vaccine are aimed at presenting just the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein to our immune system,” he said.

“The advantage of that is it should lead to neutralising antibodies which bind directly to the receptor-binding domain, which is what we’re really trying to achieve.

“We believe that will lead to biasing the immune system, if you like, to producing a more neutralising set of antibodies.”