Globe Covid vaccine gets ethical nod for human trials

Bangladesh Medical Research Council has conditionally approved Globe Biotech Ltd's Covid-19 vaccine Bangavax for human trials.

The National Research Ethics Committee of the council (BMRC) gave the approval on Wednesday.

The Bangladeshi firm would have to meet several conditions of BMRC before beginning the trials, the committee said.

Glob Biotech on January 16 applied to the BMRC for the clinical trial of its Covid vaccine.

On July 2, 2020, Globe Biotech announced they were developing a Covid-19 vaccine as they had completed preliminary animal trials successfully.

On October 5 in the same year, they said they had received "very promising" results during the pre-clinical trials on rabbits and mice.

Globe's vaccine was listed on the World Health Organization (WHO) draft landscape of Covid-19 candidate vaccines on October 15.