Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said Saturday that it had resumed a trial of the Covid-19 vaccine after getting the go-ahead from British regulators, following a hiatus caused by a UK volunteer who fell ill.
“Clinical trials for the AstraZeneca Oxford coronavirus vaccine, AZD1222, have been resumed in the UK following confirmation by the Medicines Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA) that it was safe to do so,” the company said in a statement. release.
AstraZeneca announced Wednesday that it had “voluntarily stopped” its trial of the vaccine developed in conjunction with Oxford University after the volunteer developed an unexplained illness.
An independent committee was drafted to review safety, in what the company and the World Health Organization described as a routine step.
The committee “has concluded its investigations and recommended to the MHRA that the UK trials are safe to resume,” said AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca’s candidate vaccine is one of nine worldwide currently in late-stage phase 3 human trials.
In the United States, the company began enrolling 30,000 volunteers at dozens of sites on August 31, and the inoculation is being tested in smaller groups in Brazil and other parts of South America.
The AZD1222 vaccine uses a weakened version of a common cold-causing adenovirus designed to encode the spike protein that the Covid-19 coronavirus uses to invade cells.
After vaccination, this protein is produced within the human body, which prepares the immune system to attack the coronavirus if the person is subsequently infected.
“AstraZeneca is committed to the safety of trial participants and to the highest standards of conduct in clinical trials,” the statement read Saturday.
“The company will continue to work with health authorities around the world and guide itself on when other clinical trials can resume to provide the vaccine widely, equitably and without benefits during this pandemic.”
