Role of animal serum in making of vaccines

Role of animal serum in making of vaccines

Subject : Science & tech

Context : The government on Wednesday issued a clarification stating that Covaxin, the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, did not contain the serum of a newborn calf.

Concept :

• The virus is killed, or inactivated, before being used in the vaccine, and injected into the human body, but it is still able to trigger an immune response.
• To be used in the vaccine, the virus needs to be grown, or cultured, in the laboratory. Scientists try to create conditions conducive for the growth of these viruses by recreating the kind of environment that exists in an infected person’s tissues.
• Therefore, solutions containing ‘nutrients’ act as the growth medium for the virus. These nutrients, like specific sugar and salt molecules, are extracted from tissues of suitable animals like horses, cow, goat or sheep.
• The virus grows in these nutrient-rich solutions. After that, it goes through several stages of purification that make it suitable to be used in a vaccine. There is no trace of the growth medium after the entire process is over.

Why calf serum

• According to the website of the Food and Drug Administration of the United States, cow components are used mainly because cows are large animals, easily available, and rich in some of the useful chemicals and enzymes.