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LONDON (Oct 22): AstraZeneca’s Oxford Covid-19 vaccine precisely follows the genetic instructions programmed by its developers to successfully elicit a strong immune response, according to a detailed analysis by independent UK scientists.
“The vaccine is doing everything we expected, and that’s just good news in our fight against the disease,” said David Matthews, a virology expert at the University of Bristol, who led the research.
AstraZeneca, which is developing the vaccine with researchers at the University of Oxford, is considered a pioneer in the race to produce a vaccine that protects against Covid-19.
The first data from large-scale, late-stage clinical trials underway in several countries around the world, including Brazil, the United States and Great Britain, are expected to be published before the end of the year.
The vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 or AZD1222, is made by taking a common cold virus called chimpanzee adenovirus and removing about 20% of the virus’s instructions. This means that it is impossible for the vaccine to replicate or cause disease in humans.
The focus of the Bristol researchers was to assess how often and how accurately the vaccine is copying and using the genetic instructions programmed into it by its designers. These instructions detail how to produce the coronavirus spike protein, SARS-CoV-2 that causes Covid-19.
Once the spike protein is produced, the immune system reacts to it, training the immune system to identify an actual Covid-19 infection.
“This is an important study, as we can confirm that the genetic instructions underpinning this vaccine … are correctly followed when they enter a human cell,” Matthews said in a statement about the work.
His team’s research was not reviewed by other scientists, but was published as a preprint prior to review.
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