Taner Yıldız, former Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and AK Party Kayseri Deputy, visited the Good Clinical and Practice Center (IKUM) with our Rector, Prof. Dr. Mustafa Çalış, and got information from Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zafer Sezer, Manager of the Center, about the studies conducted at the center.

In his speech, our Rector thanked Taner Yıldız, former Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and AK Party Kayseri Deputy for his visit. Giving information about the vaccine candidate developed against Covid-19, our Rector said: “The second dose application within the scope of the Phase 2 stage is being finalized today. The data will have come out within two or three weeks. We will report our data on efficacy to the Ministry of Health. The Phase 3 study will be conducted under the coordinatorship of the Ministry of Health and Health Institutes of Turkey (TUSEB). We think that the Phase 3 stage will be initiated subsequent to the efficacy reports after reporting. As Erciyes University, we transferred the intellectual property rights of our vaccine candidate to the Ministry of Health and TUSEB. In other words, our local Covid-19 vaccine is developed by Erciyes University and is the vaccine of the Ministry of Health; that is to say, the vaccine of our state.”

Congratulating our Rector and his team on the vaccine studies, Taner Yıldız, former Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and AK Party Kayseri Deputy, said: “In the environment of the countries, we see that there is a fierce competition between countries sometimes in defense industry, sometimes in communication and sometimes in technology. However, we know that the most important matter for all of us today is health, the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, the contribution that our Rector, Prof. Aykut Özdarendeli and Assoc. Prof. Zafer Sezer and teammates have made is not only the success of our university and Kayseri but also the success regarding the independence of our country in this sector. Regarding the transfer of intellectual property rights, I would like to congratulate our Rector and Prof. Özdarendeli on this exemplary behaviour. We all know that this issue is not just a matter of trade, but the most important choice of the country, especially in the matter of health, is this vaccine. We follow this study with great enthusiasm. Hopefully, together with the strong will of our President, Turkey will have the chance to make its name in this sense in the international arena.”