Developers

We started developing the vaccine when the pre-marketing trials of the first two vaccines had been completed. And we initially took a different path in order to level out those possible changes that occurred in the structure of the so-called S, or spike, protein – the outer protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

In two years, we developed the idea of the vaccine and brought it to life, conducted preclinical and clinical trials, built and launched a new research center and a full-cycle production area, and started the commercial production of the vaccine.

After the transfer of the vaccine production technology from the research and development center to the recombinant preparations production area, the production technology optimization process was started to ensure the production of Convacell^® in required volumes.

As the head of the research and development center, I was assisted by a team who believed in our laboratory: biotechnologists, analysts, research laboratory technicians, documentation specialists. This is a team that works as a single mechanism to quickly solve problems associated with the development. The team has done an enormous work to develop Convacell^®.

My contribution to the Convacell^® project was supervision of the production of protein, a key component of our vaccine.  I believe that participation in such an ambitious project allowed me, first of all, to realize my potential, to use my experience and my knowledge in practice to facilitate the market launch of a real, not merely theoretical, target product, which was useful to the society as a whole and to every person in our country, in particular.

During the development of the Convacell^® vaccine, I was engaged in the selection of the composition of the adjuvant system to obtain higher titers and develop not only humoral, but also cellular immunity after immunization of humans. Cellular immunity, as you understand, is very important, due to the fact that the immune response will last much longer than purely humoral immunity. I was also involved in the development of the method for confirming the quality of our vaccine, in particular, the peptide mapping method. It is used to prove that the vaccine contains exactly the protein that we need and which will give protective immunity against a new coronavirus infection.