Dr. Azzania Fibriani, a virologist at School of Life Science and Techology (SITH) ITB stated this on a webinar held by SDGs Center ITB on Thursday (22/07/2021). Further, she explained that until now, the Delta variant spreads the most widely. Based on these data, new virus variant types are possible to exist.

“Indonesia should be adaptive towards changes in the virus variants types that continue to exist. This can be done by vaccination. More vaccinated people means more people protected from SARS-CoV2. Monitoring for the vaccines’ effectiveness should always continue to make sure that they’re still relevant to all virus variants,” she explained.

The good news is, the development of SARS-CoV2 variants is relatively slower than other viruses, such as influenza virus. This means more time to researchers to develop relevant medicines and vaccines.

SARS-CoV2 Vaccines

Dr. Azzania explained that vaccine itself is a foreign antigen, injected to healthy people. Different types of antigens are used in different types of vaccines. Some antigens, which are found in Sinovac, are in form of inactive virus, while some antigens are in form of mRNA. Vaccines are different in antigen and adjuvant factors. Before being circulated, vaccines go through clinical trials. This includes trials on animals first before humans.

SARS-CoV2 vaccines also have different efficacies. Efficacy depends on the DNA nature of vaccinated person and the virus’ itself development. Due to different human DNA from each country, different countries have different efficacies. This also applies for virus developments. In Indonesia, SARS-CoV2 virus develops differently from other countries, this leads to different vaccine efficacy in Indonesia.

Understanding Rational Drug Design

Thanks to studies and researches, treatments for SARS-CoV2 are found now. Based on data from studies of how viruses attack the human body, researchers can now design medicines to prevent the infection. Explained by Dr. Azzania, this process is called Rational Drug Design.

Before the Rational Drug Design was discovered, drug designs were done by testing one compound at a time on viruses. Nowadays, we use computational bioinformatics. This is done by firstly designing a compound that can inhibit the ACE2 with S-protein interaction and trying them in vitro. This process minimizes failure in the manufacturing. Arbidol, Chloroquine, and Loplinavir are the ones that have been successfully developed to inhibit SARS-CoV2.

Repoter: Tarisa Putri (Teknik Kimia 2019)
Translator: Tamara Maharani Alamsyah (Seni Rupa, 2020)