The first day of the international meet on preparedness for future epidemics saw academicians, industrialists and policy makers deliberating on synergistic collaborations between academia and industry to help achieve faster vaccine development.The Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous research institute of Department of Biotechnology under the central government's Ministry of Science and Technology meeting "Preparedness for Future Epidemics: Is India ready to meet the CEPI 100 days vaccine challenge?" began on December 5 at the institute in Faridabad.The goal of the meeting is to develop a roadmap for accelerating concept, design, delivery of vaccine development for future pandemic.
Various sessions covered in the meeting include accelerating vaccine development, academic research and development preparedness and industry readiness
Sessions on regulatory aspects, clinical trials and human challenge model to accelerate vaccine development are also on the agenda."India is ready to make vaccines quickly for future pandemics as its research institutes, regulatory bodies and the industrial sector are prepared. The vaccines can be developed quickly as India has become a powerhouse of capabilities to design vaccines for viruses of the future," internationally known scientist and the former principal scientific advisor to the Government, Prof K. VijayRaghavan said at the event.
Dr Pramod Garg, Director THSTI, highlighted the pioneering role played by the institute during the Covid-19 pandemic because of its multi-disciplinary approach.The new findings indicate that the neurological and mental health effects of the pandemic on adolescents may have been even worse, the study said. They have been published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.
In 2020 alone, according to the study by Stanford University, US, reports of anxiety and depression in adults rose by more than 25 percent compared to previous years.
"We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn't know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains," said first author on the paper, Ian Gotlib, Stanford University.
Changes in brain structure occur naturally as we age, Gotlib noted.
During puberty and early teenage years, kids' bodies experience increased growth in both the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas of the brain that respectively control access to certain memories and help to modulate emotions. At the same time, tissues in the cortex, an area involved in executive functioning, become thinner.
By comparing MRI scans from a cohort of 163 children taken before and during the pandemic, Gotlib's study showed that this developmental process sped up in adolescents as they experienced the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Until now, he said, these sorts of accelerated changes in "brain age" have appeared only in children who have experienced chronic adversity, whether from violence, neglect, family dysfunction, or a combination of multiple factors.
Although those experiences are linked to poor mental health outcomes later in life, it is unclear whether the changes in brain structure that the Stanford team observed are linked to changes in mental health, Gotlib noted.
"It's also not clear if the changes are permanent," said Gotlib, who is also the director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory at Stanford University
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