HOUSTON, TX – Researchers in Houston are looking for volunteers to try out a new coronavirus vaccine. Houston Fights Covid has been recruiting volunteers for covid vaccine testing since the end of last summer. Sarah Hassan with DM Clinical research and the Texas Center for Drug Development says we are used to the mRNA vaccines. The new vaccine candidate, developed by Medicago, is now in Phase 3 testing. It’s plant based and in this case a protein is extracted from a distant cousin of the tobacco plant. Of course, there’s no nicotine involved. Hassan says “We’re possibly to produce this vaccine even faster than we were with the mRNA vaccine. That protein is made synthetically in the lab and it takes longer. This one we’re able to mass produce it even faster.”
