How Rhesus Macaque Monkeys Were Tracked for Covaxin Testing!

In “Going Viral: The Making of Covaxin – The Inside StoryDr Balram Bhargava, Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) talks about India’s journey of indigenous vaccine.

The book also touches on the intricacies of science and the challenges faced by Indian scientists during the fight against COVID-19, from development of a strong laboratory network, diagnosis, treatment and serosurvey to new technologies and vaccines.

Bhargava says it’s important to remember that the protagonists of Covaxin’s success story aren’t just humans because the 20 monkeys are “partly responsible for the fact that millions of us now have a life-saving vaccine”.

“Once we knew the vaccine could generate antibodies in small animals, the next logical step was to test it on larger animals such as monkeys, which were comparable to humans in terms of their body composition and immune systems,” They write in the book. Published by Roopa.

Used in medical research around the world, rhesus macaque monkeys are considered the best non-human primates for such studies.

Bhargava says the ICMR-National Institute of Virology’s Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, the only state-of-the-art facility in India for primate studies, has once again taken up the challenge of conducting this important research.

But there was a hurdle: where to get the monkeys since there are no laboratory-bred rhesus macaques in India?

Researchers from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) contacted several zoos and institutions across India to find something with no luck.

“Just to make things more difficult, they needed young monkeys with a good immune response, as some of the aging monkeys were unsuitable for NIV,” says Bhargava.

“A dedicated team from ICMR-NIV traveled to areas of Maharashtra to identify sites to capture the animals. Macaques, losing their usual urban food sources due to the lockdown, had gone deep into the forests. Maharashtra The forest department helped them track the monkeys, trawling several square kilometers of forests for several days, before finding the monkeys near Nagpur,” he writes.

However, he added that protecting experimental animals from SARS-CoV-2 was another challenge before starting preclinical studies.

“Since animals can be infected from humans, all caregivers, veterinarians and other sanitation workers were screened weekly for SARS-CoV-2, and had to follow strict prevention protocols,” he says. Huh.

The next challenge was to conduct large animal experiments at the NIV’s high-security control facility.

“To begin with, this requires critical infrastructure (bronchoscope, X-ray machine, suitable habitat for monkeys), training the team, developing protocols, standardizing procedures such as bronchoscopy in macaques, and necropsy,” they write.

“There were too many balls in the air and we couldn’t afford to drop someone. We had to plan very carefully. It was hard to do these experiments in a positive pressure suit as well as a control facility for 10 .-12 hours without food and water,” he says after the research.

“In the end, everything turned out well. The monkey business was done, and the participants of both species who made it possible deserve more praise than we could possibly give them,” he says.