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A team of UK researchers wants to infect healthy volunteers with the new coronavirus to study the disease, hoping to speed up the development of a vaccine.
Imperial College London (ICL) says it has a team ready to begin a “human challenge study” with the virus that causes covid-19, being “the first study of this type in the world,” reads the institution’s website.
In the first phase of the project, they intend to explore the feasibility of exposing healthy people to SARS-CoV-2. For that, they are looking for volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30, with no history or symptoms of covid-19, no health problems or known adverse risk factors for covid-19, such as heart disease, diabetes or obesity.
Once the first phase is complete, the researchers want to use the same human challenge model to study how potential vaccines work in the body to stop or prevent COVID-19, as well as to identify potential treatments and an immune response.
“Our number one priority is the safety of the volunteers,” said Chris Chiu, coordinator of this Human Challenges Program quoted on the ICL website.
The researcher from the ICL Department of Infectious Diseases assured that this is not a debut: “My team has been developing safely challenge studies in humans with other respiratory viruses for more than ten years. No study is completely risk-free, but the Human Challenge Program partners will work hard to ensure the risks are as low as possible. “
The approach is risky, but the researchers believe they may have results sooner than through standard research, which chooses to wait and see if volunteers who have received experimental treatment get sick.
The team hopes the work will help reduce the spread of the new coronavirus, mitigate its impact and reduce deaths.
According to Chris Chiu, “Human challenge studies can increase understanding of COVID-19 in unique ways and accelerate the development of potential COVID-19 treatments and vaccines.”
The Human Challenge Program is a partnership between Imperial College London, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), hVIVO, a clinical company with expertise in viral human challenge models, and the Royal Fere London NHS Foundation Trust.
