The developer of the Ukrainian vaccine against COVID announced a lack of funding

In Ukraine, the development of its own CORONAVIRUS vaccine has been suspended due to insufficient funding and lack of interest from the country's authorities. this was stated by the HEAD of the Lviv Institute of Cell Biology of the National Academy of Sciences Andriy Sibirny, the Public portal reports.

Sibirny said that scientists have already completed part of the work. “They made the producers of viral proteins on humanized yeast, purified the proteins, characterized them, proved that they are highly immunogenic, that is, they cause the appearance of antibodies in mice. This is positive,” he said.

Then, the scientist continued, it was necessary to find out how effectively the formed proteins protect mice from death, this should have been done in Poland, where there are necessary laboratories. According to Sibirny, the National Research Foundation of Ukraine “did it for half a year” and did not allow to pay Polish scientists, while this is not officially prohibited. He added that the study cost almost 300 thousand euros (more than 25.1 million rubles), to create a vaccine, it is necessary to conduct experiments on large animals, such as primates or ground squirrels.

For the production of large volumes of the drug, Sibirny specified, it is necessary to invest 300-500 million euros (25.1-41.9 billion rubles), but no one is ready to allocate such money. “It's stuck. There was interest from the President [Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky] and Prime Minister [Ukraine Denys Shmyhal] when there was little on the vaccine market. Now there are a lot of vaccines. There is no interest in them,” he explained.