A coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford appears safe and trains the immune system.
Trials with 1,077 people showed that the injection led them to produce antibodies and white blood cells that can fight the coronavirus.
The findings are very promising, but it is still too early to know whether this is enough to offer protection and larger trials are underway.
The UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine.
How does the vaccine work?
Called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, the vaccine is being developed at an unprecedented rate.
It is made from a genetically modified virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees.
It has been greatly modified, first, so that it cannot cause infection in people and also so that it “looks” more like a coronavirus.
The scientists did this by transferring the genetic instructions for the coronavirus “spike protein,” the crucial tool it uses to invade our cells, to the vaccine they were developing.
This means that the vaccine resembles the coronavirus and the immune system can learn how to attack it.
What are antibodies and T cells?
Much of the focus on the coronavirus so far has focused on antibodies, but these are only part of our immune defense.
Antibodies are small proteins produced by the immune system that adhere to the surface of viruses.
Neutralizing antibodies can deactivate the coronavirus.
T cells, a type of white blood cell, help coordinate the immune system and can detect which cells in the body have been infected and destroy them.
Almost all effective vaccines induce both an antibody and a T-cell response.
T-cell levels peaked 14 days after vaccination, and antibody levels peaked after 28 days. The study has not been done long enough to understand what long-term immunity might look like.
It is safe?
Yes, but there are side effects.
There were no dangerous side effects from taking the vaccine, however 70% of the people in the trial developed fever or headache.
The researchers say this could be managed with paracetamol.
Professor Sarah Gilbert of the University of Oxford, UK says: “There is still a lot of work to be done before we can confirm whether our vaccine will help manage the COVID-19 pandemic, but these early results are promising.”
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