As Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech have been busy this month releasing early data from their COVID-19 vaccine programs, AstraZeneca is joining the July data crash.
And overall it’s good news: The vaccine test, known as AZD1222 and developed by AstraZeneca and scientists from the University of Oxford, was generally safe (fever and headaches affected most but could be controlled), and saw both antibodies and T cell immune responses.
Whether this is enough to create strong and lasting immunity against SARS-CoV-02, the virus that causes COVID-19, remains the biggest question, and longer-term follow-up trials will be needed to confirm this (and they are in progress).
But patience is not a keyword in this pandemic, and the UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine, even though it was not approved, although Oxford previously said the vaccine could somehow be approved as early as September. .
So the first look at the data looks like this: the phase 1/2 trial saw around 500 patients who received the AZ / Oxford vaccine, also known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, and compared the results with those of approximately the same number who were vaccinated against meningococcus.
For the AZ vaccine, antibodies against he The SARS-CoV-2 peak protein peaked at day 28 and remained elevated until day 56, indicating an immune response against the virus. A lot of so-called T-cells, a type of white blood cell, have also been made recently: Here, T-cell vaccine levels peaked 14 days after vaccination and were still present two months later.
The median age was 35 years, much younger than the group that will need it the most, that is, those over 70 years of age, and most of those who received the AZ vaccine had pain, headaches, fever and fatigue, although there doesn’t seem to be anything more serious. These were generally controlled with paracetamol.
Professor Andrew Pollard, Ph.D., chief investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial and co-author of the study, said: “The intermediate data from phase 1/2 of our coronavirus vaccine show that the vaccine did not lead to any reaction. unexpected and had a safety profile similar to previous vaccines of this type.
“The immune responses seen after vaccination are in line with what we hope will be associated with protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, although we must continue our rigorous clinical trial program to confirm this. We saw the strongest immune response in participants who received two doses of the vaccine, indicating that this could be a good strategy for vaccination. “
Mene Pangalos, AZ Executive Vice President of Research and Development for Biopharmaceuticals, added: “We are encouraged by the interim phase 1/2 data showing that AZD1222 was able to generate a rapid antibody and T cell response against SARS-CoV- two. While there is more work to be done, today’s data increases our confidence that the vaccine will work and allows us to continue our plans to manufacture the vaccine at scale for broad and equitable access worldwide. “
Later stage trials are currently underway in the UK, Brazil and South Africa and are expected to start in the United States. These trials “will determine how well the vaccine will protect against COVID-19 disease and will measure safety and immune responses at different age ranges and at various doses,” according to AstraZeneca. These studies will be the real acid test.
The vaccine works by being molded from a genetically modified virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees and is designed to resemble the virus enough to trick the immune system into learning how to attack it if the true SARS-CoV- 02 will infect a virus. patient, but not enough to cause the patient to contract the disease.
This is a different approach from that coming from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, CureVac and Moderna, three other major players in the COVID-19 vaccine that use mRNA, which could be quicker but have never seen an approved drug or inoculation with this. MOA.
Shares in AstraZeneca have risen over the past week on highly anticipated data, but fell a few percentage points when The Lancet’s publication came out in the mid-afternoon UK time. The company has said it will not seek profits from the vaccine during the pandemic.
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