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Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a closely-watched, protective-looking coronavirus vaccine in a small study of six monkeys, promising findings that led to the start of human trials late last month, US researchers reported Thursday and British.
The preliminary findings, which have not undergone rigorous review by other scientists, appeared on the bioRxiv preprint server on Thursday.
British pharmacist AstraZeneca announced last month that he had partnered with researchers at the Oxford Vaccine Group and the Jenner Institute, who are developing the vaccine.
According to the report, some of the monkeys who received an injection of the vaccine developed antibodies to the virus within 14 days, and all developed protective antibodies within 28 days, before being exposed to high doses of the virus.
After exposure, the vaccine appeared to prevent damage to the lungs and prevented the virus from making copies of itself there, but the virus was still actively replicating in the nose.
Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeys’ data was “definitely” good news.
“It is one of the obstacles that the Oxford vaccine must overcome and it has been removed well,” he said in an emailed comment.
Although success in monkeys is considered a key step, many vaccines that protect monkeys in the laboratory ultimately fail to protect humans.
Evans said a key finding was particularly reassuring: that there was no evidence of immunodeficiency disease, in which, instead of protecting against a virus, a vaccine actually worsens the disease.
“This was a definite theoretical concern for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and finding no evidence for it in this study is very encouraging,” he said.
Last month, British researchers began dosing human volunteers with the vaccine in a small safety trial, making it one of the few to have reached that milestone. As of May 13, 1,000 people received the vaccine, the researchers said.
Other vaccines in human trials include Moderna Inc, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE <22UAy.F> and CanSino Biologics Inc of China<6185.HK>.
Globally, more than 100 experimental vaccines are being developed to combat the new coronavirus, which has so far infected 4.39 million people and killed 296,847.
A vaccine that protects people from the coronavirus could tackle the pandemic, but finding one that works and makes enough doses is a big challenge.
Typically, it can take up to 10 years to develop a working vaccine, but the pandemic’s urgency has resulted in accelerated timeframes, and some officials estimate that a working vaccine may be available for emergency use as early as this fall.
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