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LONDON (Oct 26): One of the world’s leading Covid-19 experimental vaccines produces an immune response in both young and older adults, raising hopes of emerging from the sadness and economic destruction brought on by the new coronavirus.
The vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, also triggers lower adverse responses among the elderly, British drug maker AstraZeneca plc, which is helping make the vaccine, said today.
A vaccine that works is seen as a game changer in the battle against the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.15 million people, closed swaths of the global economy and turned the normal lives of billions upside down. of people.
“It is encouraging to see that immunogenicity responses were similar between older and younger adults and that reactogenicity was lower in older adults, where the severity of Covid-19 disease is greatest,” said an AstraZeneca spokesperson.
“The results further build the body of evidence for AZD1222’s safety and immunogenicity,” the spokesperson said, referring to the technical name of the vaccine.
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first big pharma to gain regulatory approval, along with the candidate from Pfizer and BioNTech, as the world tries to chart a path out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The news that older people get an immune response from the vaccine is positive because the immune system weakens with age and older people are most at risk of dying from the virus.
If it works, a vaccine would allow the world to return to some normalcy after the tumult of the pandemic.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that a vaccine was not ready yet, but that he was preparing logistics for a possible deployment mainly in the first half of 2021.
When asked if some people could get a vaccine this year, he told the BBC: “I don’t rule that out, but that is not my central expectation.”
“The program is progressing well, [but] we’re not there yet, “Hancock said.
Common cold virus
Work on the Oxford vaccine began in January. Called AZD1222 or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, the viral vector vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections in chimpanzees.
The chimpanzee cold virus has been genetically modified to include the genetic sequence of the so-called spike protein that the coronavirus uses to access human cells. The hope is that the human body will attack the new coronavirus if it sees it again.
Immunogenicity blood tests performed on a subset of older participants echo data published in July that showed the vaccine elicited “robust immune responses” in a group of healthy adults ages 18 to 55, the Financial previously reported. Times (FT).
Details of the finding are expected to be published shortly in a clinical journal, the FT said. He did not name the publication.
People familiar with the results of so-called immunogenicity blood tests performed on a subset of older participants said the findings echo data published in July that showed the vaccine elicited “robust immune responses” in a group of adults. healthy between 18 and 55 years.
AstraZeneca has signed several supply and manufacturing agreements with companies and governments around the world as it approaches to report the first results of an advanced stage clinical trial.
It resumed the US trial of the experimental vaccine after approval by US regulators, the company said last Friday.
Trust staff at a London hospital have been told to be ready to receive the first batches of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, The Sun newspaper reported today.
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