<span style="color: #222222;">The Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSO), the National regulatory body for Indian Pharmaceuticals and medical devices, has granted approval to Zydus Cadila to initiate phase I and II human clinical trials in India for its potential COVID-19 vaccine. This is the second potential vaccine after Bharat Biotech COVAXIN which got the approval for human clinical trials.<br />”<br />”The Zydus’ vaccine ZyCoV-D developed indigenously at the company's Vaccine Technology Centre in Ahmedabad after completing the pre-clinical phase. In a statement, the company said, in animal studies the vaccine was found to elicit a strong immune response in multiple animal species like mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. The antibodies produced by the vaccine were able to completely neutralize the wild type virus in virus neutralization assay indicating the protective potential of the vaccine candidate.<br />”<br />”Zydus has already manufactured clinical GMP batches of the vaccine candidate and plans to initiate the clinical trials in this month across multiple sites in India in over one thousand subjects.</span><br />