The head of a US company developing a COVID-19 vaccine said Sunday that as coronavirus infection rates in Israel increase, it could be used as a site for human trials.
“I understand that Israel is under some major challenges regarding the prevalence of COVID, and that it would present an opportunity to perhaps do the registry study in Israel, also combining that data with other countries,” said Joseph Payne, CEO of Arcturus Therapeutics. . Channel 12 news, referring to phase 3 trials in humans.
“It is key that you have the study in a place where there is a substantial amount of COVID present so that you can more quickly prove that your vaccine works,” Payne said.
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Last week, Arcturus Therapeutics said it had signed a binding term sheet with Israel in a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars, days after the firm reached an agreement to start human clinical trials in Singapore for its COVID-19 vaccine.
Arcturus Therapeutics CEO Joseph Payne says Israel could be used for human vaccine trials, July 27, 2020 (Screenshot News / Channel 12)
A Channel 12 news report last week, which did not cite any sources, said the Israeli agreement to buy four million vaccines will only be carried out if the next rounds of testing are successful. The Health Ministry declined to comment on the report.
Arcturus Therapeutics and Duke-NUS School of Medicine, a collaboration between Duke University and the National University of Singapore, announced last week that clinical trials in Singapore for their LUNAR-COV19 vaccine candidate were approved.
Testing will begin on up to 108 adults “as soon as possible,” the association said in a statement.
“The approval of the Clinical Trial Application for LUNAR-COV19 is a critical milestone for Arcturus,” said Payne, President and CEO of Arcturus.
The product “can facilitate the mass vaccination campaigns necessary to target hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” he said.
“Preclinical studies on LUNAR-COV19 have shown very promising results, including the possibility that a single dose of this vaccine may be sufficient to trigger robust and long-lasting immune responses,” said Professor Ooi Eng Eong, Deputy Director of the Disease Program. Duke-NUS Emerging Infectives in the statement.
An entrance to a Moderna, Inc. building, May 18, 2020, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (AP Photo / Bill Sikes)
Last month, Israel signed an agreement with US biotech firm Moderna for the possible purchase of its coronavirus vaccine if it turns out to be effective, Hebrew media reported.
The company announced in June that it will enter the third and final stage of its clinical trial in July with 30,000 participants.
Moderna’s vaccination effort is a world pioneer, along with a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford with AstraZeneca, which also launched a large-scale trial of 10,000 volunteers and expects results by September.
Due to the desperate need for a vaccine in the midst of the pandemic that has killed more than 624,000 people worldwide, pharmaceutical companies are increasing manufacturing with ongoing human trials.
The agencies contributed to this report.
