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TIKA-The Magical Vaccine

Ever since Edward Jenner had discovered the Cow Pox Vaccine and Louis Pasteur carried on the baton by developing rabies vaccine the pace of race continued with the most prolific development of many successful vaccines by Maurice Hilleman.

With the advent of science and application of cutting edge technology the bio pharmaceutical industry has achieved a tremendous growth. many vaccines have been discovered for prevention of infectious diseases and vaccination has been implemented successfully in most parts of the globe.

Government and various NGOs are creating awareness through various campaigns and media publicity to educate the masses and thus implement the vaccination effectively. Today's average man is well aware of the vaccination and he carries the schedule whenever he takes his child for vaccination to the physician.

Due to the cold chain supply and storage facilities at Pharmacies the vaccines are easily available, thus a common man's need  is sufficed. After having discovered vaccines for many common diseases and successfully implementing vaccination man's quest for developing an ideal vaccine with extraordinary characteristics if not magical so as to eradicate all the infectious diseases still goes on.

"Yes I got it" exclaimed Charak with joy and excitement as if "Archimedes Eureka"was repeated. Charak had developed a Novel vaccine which was not less than a magical tool for the scientific community.Charak named his magical vaccine as "TIKA". He was working for years toiling his mid night oil in his university laboratory. Accomplishing such a marvelous research  was not an easy task for him.

Charak was born in a middle class family. His father was a science teacher at village school. His mother though a house wife was a preuniversity undergraduate in science. Thus Charak had liking for science from his childhood. Many a times he would ask strange questions to his father out of utter curiosity. Realizing Charak's liking and aptitude towards science after ignoring his initial silly but logical questions his parents always tried to explain him the scientific principles lying behind mysteries of nature.

After completing his schooling from the village Charak was enrolled in the preuniversity(PU) in the near by town based on his merit. Charak worked hard and achieved excellent grades. Thus could get admission in one of the renowned universities. He completed his graduation in Pharmacy and research in drug discovery. During his research he went to Europe for advanced study on vaccine development. While in Europe he interacted with many eminent professors and thus developed a strong liking towards Vaccines, which was his major topic of research thereafter.

After coming back to university for continuing research on NDDS and Novel Vaccine Development. He used genetic engineering tools to modify a single entity into different antigenic forms so as to modulate immunologic response and thus provide  immunity against infectious diseases by trigerring the production of antibodies. His mode of approach towards the designing and development of novel vaccine was entirely different. Unlike the traditional / conventional vaccines, he used synthetic, semi or bio synthetic and tissue culture techniques to produce the required entity which could be attached to various epitopes. Thus a single entity could be used to produce various antibodies in vivo and protection against multiple diseases can be achieved.

The so called entity was a tailor made entity by genetic engineering. Many vectors like plasmids / phages were  used to carry the DNA into the host cells and by using the genetic scissors (Restriction endonucleases) the plasmid DNA was cut, gene insert ligated by DNA ligase and thus many palindromic motifs were created which specified the genetic information to the cell to produce the required entity.He used the recombinant DNA to produce the recombinant protein entity.He studied various conformational and linear epitopes and their interaction with paratopes. Thus a bio synthetic entity with multiple epitopes and also monoepitope which can be configured as per the requirements were achieved.

thus by utilizing the various genetic engineering tools like-plasmids vectors, gene cloning, protein expression, restriction, ligation, palindromic motifs, rDNA, recombinant proteins and his creative thinking Charak finally developed TIKA.

Although I woke up with an empty syringe after the alarm in my mobile phone went off but still there is space to fill the syringe  with TIKA and make the world disease free.


Dr. Joel J. Nobel

Comments

  1. This is a marvelous imagination sir. You just took me to my college days with your word such as plasmid, vector, rDNA and so on. All of us (especially me) coming out with tonnes of dreams but we never find right plasmid to develop and ended up in different field for "rice bowl'. But just mockly smiling and happy for others achievements. Continue writing sir....I'm here to read.

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  2. satyajit wattamwar - nice one. but i could not figure out exactly what disease TIKA vaccine prevents? and who is this new age 'Charak'? or did i miss the complete point of 'symbolic story'?

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