Oxford vaccine: first signs if it works in humans in mid-June

• The Oxford University team looking for the coronavirus vaccine says it will receive an early signal if it works in humans in mid-June.
• Human trials of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 began in Oxford on April 23, after successful testing on macaque monkeys in late March.
• “We hope to receive some signal as to whether it is working in mid-June,” Sir John Bell, Regius professor of medicine at the university, told BBC radio on Thursday.
• Bell also announced a partnership with British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which will increase production if the vaccine is approved.
• Up to 90 vaccines are in production worldwide, some of which have started human trials.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

The Oxford University team leading the race to secure a coronavirus vaccine says they hope to get the first indication of whether it works in humans in mid-June.

Human trials of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 began in Oxford on April 23, after successful testing on macaque monkeys in the United States in late March.

“We hope to receive some signal as to whether it is working in mid-June,” Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, told the BBC radio program “Today” on Thursday.

“This is still a development program.”

The vaccine is being developed primarily by the Jenner Institute, an independent research group that works as part of the Oxford Vaccine Group.

About 1,100 people are expected to be injected as part of the UK government-funded trial.

Up to 90 vaccines are being developed worldwide, but early indications suggest that the Oxford group is leading the way.

Vaccines generally take five to 10 years to develop, test, approve, regulate, and license, but the coronavirus pandemic has forced health authorities to allow vaccine manufacturers to move as quickly as possible toward human trials.

The first readings of the Oxford human trials will be available to Andrew Pollard, the head of the clinical trials program, in May.

Also on Thursday, the Oxford Vaccine Group announced a partnership with British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to help increase production when human trials conclude.

“We will need to do 30 or 40 million doses in the first instance to have sufficient availability. If it is approved, we can vaccinate people immediately,” Bell told the BBC.

However, he noted that there were several challenges to navigate, even if his vaccine was approved.

“In the vials in which the vaccine is placed, the so-called filling and completion, there are only 200 million vials in the world now because they have all been absorbed by several people who can anticipate the arrival of a vaccine.” said. “There are many challenges.”

Professor Sarah Gilbert, lead expert at the Oxford Vaccine Group, initially set September as the date when she would know if the vaccine works safely.

However, last week, the world’s largest vaccine maker, the Indian Whey Institute, said it wouldn’t wait that long, and began developing millions of batches of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 right away.

“We are not expecting the tests to end in September in the UK and then start production here,” said Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Institute.

“The decision, at our own risk and cost, has been made solely to start manufacturing, to have enough doses available, if clinical trials are successful.”

A number of other vaccines in development have also reached human trials, as previously reported by Mia Jankowicz of Business Insider.

The American and German pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech recently injected 12 healthy people in Germany with their experimental vaccine BNT162.

Moderna, the American biotechnology company, is also conducting human trials and has submitted a new drug application for its mRNA-1273 vaccine to the US Food and Drug Administration. USA

GlaxoSmithKline, one of the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world, is also with the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi on a vaccine. They say it will be ready for human testing in the second half of 2020.

Some scientists fear that a vaccine will never emerge. So far, there are no vaccines for any of the major coronaviruses.