A top British official called the latest news about the possible coronavirus vaccine from a team at Oxford University “extremely encouraging.” Results from the Phase I / II trial of the vaccine being developed by the Jenner Institute in Oxford, along with the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, showed that it is safe and “produced strong immune results,” according to research published Monday in The Lancet medical. diary.
The vaccine caused a two-pronged immune response, said a press release from the Jenner Institute in Oxford. First, in 14 days, it triggered a T-cell response, generating white blood cells that can attack infected cells. Second, within 28 days, it elicited an antibody response. According to the publication, the antibodies can prevent the virus from infecting the cells when it is initially contracted.
“Those are two parts of the immune system that ideally work together to protect against viral infections,” Professor Sarah Gilbert, who leads the Oxford team, told CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata.
Sean Elias / Oxford Vaccine Center
The UK phase I / II trial started in April and involved more than 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55. Some of those volunteers received a second booster dose of the vaccine, and seemed to benefit the most.
“We saw the strongest immune response in the 10 participants who received two doses of the vaccine, indicating that this could be a good strategy for vaccination,” said Professor Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford vaccine trial at the Oxford University and co-author of the study said.
Crucially, the trial also showed that the candidate vaccine produced no serious side effects, causing mild headaches, fatigue, and some pain around the injection site.
“We are all giving a sigh of relief,” said Dr. David Agus, a medical contributor to CBS News, about the trial results. “We are getting the immune responses that science expected.”
Oxford is working with AstraZeneca to develop, manufacture and produce a large-scale coronavirus vaccine. The unprecedented effort aims to make about 2 billion doses of the vaccine available worldwide, through partnerships with manufacturers in several countries, early next year.
Lead scientist Gilbert told the BBC on Tuesday morning that although the hope was to be able to have millions of doses available by this fall, there was still “absolutely no certainty” of that timeline, as the final trials of Phase III were still ongoing. , and the deployment of the vaccine on a large scale also depended on the manufacturing process and on the approval of each country’s safety regulators for emergency use.
While the latest results are encouraging, they show that the test vaccine creates the reaction in the body that should give immunity to the disease. Phase III trials, to demonstrate that they actually give people that immunity in the real world, are already in progress, which involves a much larger sample of people, in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. A phase III human trial of the Oxford vaccine involving about 30,000 people will begin in August in the United States.
“While there is more work to be done, today’s data builds our confidence that the vaccine will work and allows us to continue our plans to manufacture the vaccine at scale for broad and equitable access worldwide,” Mene Pangalos, Vice President Biopharmaceutical Research and Development executive at AstraZeneca, she said.
The US government has already invested a whopping $ 1 billion in the Oxford trial vaccine, betting that it is a success to secure millions of doses as soon as possible.
Britain also invested around $ 90 million in the work of the Oxford Jenner Institute for vaccine research. On Monday, the British government’s business secretary Alok Sharma called the latest trial results “extremely encouraging, taking us one step closer to finding a successful vaccine to protect millions in the UK and around the world.”
The Oxford vaccine has been up against some 15 serious global competitors for months, but a few others follow in the team’s footsteps.
Just last week, officials announced equally encouraging results phase I trial of a vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health and Modern Inc. The experimental vaccine will advance to its most important pace in late July: a study of 30,000 people to demonstrate that the vaccines are effective in stopping coronavirus infection.
News of the vaccine in the UK was published Monday in The Lancet along with another study of a Chinese vaccine trial. That vaccine also showed promise, creating a strong antibody and T-cell response in more than 90 percent of those who received the injection after 28 days.
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