Scientists develop vaccine against Avian Coronavirus

With the death of about two thousand, six hundred and sixty-six, (2,666), people, MIGAL’s researchers Thursday, developed vaccine against ‘Avian Coronavirus’, called Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV).

The researchers said the vaccine is very effective and would soon be adapted to create a human vaccine against COVID-19.

MIGAL Galilee Research Institute Ltd is a regional R&D center of the Israeli Science and Technology Ministry owned by the Galilee Development Company Ltd.

Confirming the development, Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology, Mr. Ofir Akunis, said: “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.” Minister Akunis 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.

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.