São Paulo State GovernmentButanVac, the vaccine candidate that will be produced by the Butantan Institute entirely in Brazil with no need to import any ingredients, has begun clinical trials. On July 9, two days after the Brazillian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) approved the trials, six volunteers were examined at the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (USP) in Ribeirão Preto in preparation to receive the first dose of the compound in the coming weeks. The first of the three trial phases is used to assess the safety of the product and will involve 418 volunteers, who will be randomly divided into two groups: one will receive two doses of ButanVac with an interval of 28 days, and the other will be given two doses of a placebo (an innocuous compound). The phase two trial, which will involve more than 5,000 people, will test ButanVac’s capacity to generate an immune response. During this phase, the data will be compared with other COVID-19 vaccines already in use.
