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The news of a 90 percent effective vaccine in preliminary results, developed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the biotechnology company BioNTech, has raised hopes that protection against SARS-CoV-2 is on the horizon.
Now, another vaccine developed by the Belgian company Janssen try to get as good or better results in what will be the third major trial of a Covid-19 vaccine carried out in the UK.
The British trial will start with 6,000 people and other countries will recruit more volunteers for a total of 30,000 participants. Half of these volunteers will receive two doses of the vaccine two months apart.
The results of this trial it may take six to nine months be available.
Like the Pfizer vaccine, the Janssen vaccine also seeks to target structures found in virus particles called spikes.
But unlike Pfizer, whose vaccine injects part of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic code into volunteers, Janssen opted to use a common genetically modified flu virus so it becomes apparently more harmless and resembles the new coronavirus at the molecular level.
This strategy should start the immune system to recognize the new coronavirus and fight it.
The approach is similar to that used in the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford in conjunction with the pharmaceutical company AtraZeneca and which is also being tested in the UK. The difference is that it uses a virus that normally infects chimpanzees, while Janssen’s uses one that infects people.
Both trials are recent and experimental, as is a third British trial by Novavax, which began in September, that follows the more traditional method of injecting viral proteins into volunteers.
The search for various vaccines.
No total, there are now 25,000 people taking part in Covid-19 vaccine trials in the UK, at a stage in which the British Government has already ordered six different vaccines, including 30 million doses of the one produced by Janssen.
“It is very important that we explore several different vaccines from several different manufacturers,” explained Saul Faust, who will lead the trial of this new vaccine in the UK.
“We simply we do not know how each of these vaccines will behave and we cannot be sure that the supply of a vaccine given by a particular provider is efficient and safe, “he added.
The search for several effective vaccines against the new coronavirus is also important because one of them may be more suitable in certain age groups and because a single company would have difficulty distributing the vaccine worldwide.
Kate Bingham, leader of workgroup British doctor dedicated to finding effective vaccines, told the BBC that “You need to explore many vaccines [contra a Covid-19] both in the UK and in the rest of the world, to ensure that there is a safe and effective one for the entire population “.
“This is why it is so important to launch this trial of the Janssen vaccine to ensure safety, efficacy and durability. And I continue to encourage people to sign up to participate in trials like this, ”he added.
Since the start of the pandemic, the new coronavirus has infected more than 54 million people worldwide, 35 million of whom have recovered from the disease, however. The global death toll is now 1.3 million.
