The Israeli-American pharmaceutical company Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. is expecting to launch a clinical human trial for an oral COVID-19 vaccine in the second quarter of 2021, The Jerusalem Post reports.
CEO Nadav Kidron said an oral vaccine could "eliminate several barriers to rapid, wide-scale distribution, potentially enabling people to take the vaccines themselves at home." He added that they could especially come in handy if yearly COVID-19 vaccinations are recommended, like the flu shot, but argued that because the candidate targets three structural proteins on the virus, rather than the single spike protein, it "should be much more resistant to COVID-19 variants." Kidron also said it will be cheaper to produce and easier to store than vaccines that are administered via shot.
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