Long-awaited test results for a coronavirus vaccine candidate AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) licensed from Oxford University it reached The lancet, a major medical journal, on Monday. And they put the adenovirus-based candidate, named AZD1222, firmly at the forefront of the race to develop vaccines that can end the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was a large initial-stage trial with 1,077 healthy patients randomized to receive a single injection of AZD1222 or a meningitis vaccine as a control. The researchers also gave 10 patients in the AZD1222 group a booster injection after 28 days.
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In terms of safety, the results ranged from quite good to wonderful. There were no serious adverse events related to AZD1222, but some patients reported pain at the injection site and symptoms that could be mistaken for an actual COVID-19 infection. More than 20% of patients receiving AZD1222 reported moderate fever and fatigue.
It is too early to measure the number of COVID-19 infections in each group to measure the effectiveness of AZD1222, but the signs of an immune response that could stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were encouraging . Antibodies that bind to the spike protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter host cells reached peak production 28 days after injection and remained at high levels during a 56-day evaluation.
Oxford and AstraZeneca have already started larger phase 3 clinical trials in Brazil, the UK and South Africa. A similar study in the United States to measure how many people injected with AZD1222 receive COVID-19 compared to those who received a placebo should start soon.
