One less step for the Spanish vaccine against Covid to become a reality. Hipra, the Girona-based multinational that is leading the project, has started phase III of the clinical trial of the vaccine and will now analyze whether its product is effective in immunocompromised people. Although a good part of the population is already immunized and the virus is also being less aggressive, the next commercialization of its vaccine, if the trials end successfully, could be very useful for patients who need booster doses.

Specifically, as explained this Wednesday in a statement by the Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica de Girona (Idibgi), which participates in the project baptized as RBDCOV, it wants to determine if an additional dose of the vaccine, which the European Medicines Agency is Analyzing so that it can be validated before this summer, it can generate an immune response in people who live with disorders of the immune system, such as immunodeficiencies, or who receive immunosuppressive treatments.

Thus, they will study whether the vaccine is capable of reactivating or generating a "sufficient" immune response again, increasing the activity of the immune system against the virus, and they will also evaluate the safety of the new vaccine and whether it is capable of prolonging the effect of the vaccine. vaccination that the participants have already received.

In total, 400 volunteers from three hospitals in Spain, including the Trueta Hospital in Gerona, and three from Turkey will participate in the study: they are adults with pathologies or conditions of immunosuppression whose immune system may be "less receptive" to vaccines .

The profiles of the study participants include people with primary immunodeficiency; people who have received a kidney transplant or have kidney disease; people in dialysis program; and people who are receiving treatment with Rituximab.

The RBDCOV project is one of the 11 selected projects that support clinical trials of the new vaccine and that can reach "beyond the borders of Europe" by creating links with other European initiatives to address the fight against coronaviruses and reinforce infrastructures existing research.