India's first indigenous mRNA vaccine candidate has received regulatory nods from the Drug Controller General of India to initiate Phase I & II human clinical trial, the Ministry of Earth Sciences said on Friday.

The novel mRNA vaccine candidate, HGCO19 has been developed by Gennova, a company based in Pune and supported with seed grant under the Ind-CEPI mission of the Department of Biotechnology of Science and Technology Ministry. MRNA-based vaccines are scientifically the ideal choice to address a pandemic because of their rapid developmental timeline. The mRNA vaccine is considered safe as is non-infectious, non-integrating in nature, and degraded by standard cellular mechanisms. They are expected to be highly efficacious because of their inherent capability of being translatable into the protein structure inside the cell cytoplasm.

The mRNA vaccines do not use the conventional model to produce immune response. Instead, mRNA vaccine carries the molecular instructions to make the protein in the body through a synthetic RNA of the virus. The host body uses this to produce the viral protein that is recognised and thus making the body mount an immune response against the disease.

Additionally, mRNA vaccines are fully synthetic and do not require a host for growth, e.g., eggs or bacteria. Therefore, they can be quickly manufactured in an inexpensive manner under cGMP conditions to ensure their "availability" and "accessibility" for mass vaccination on a sustainable basis.