Screen grab taken from video issued by Britain’s Oxford University, showing microbiologist Elisa Granato, being injected as part of the first human trials in the UK for a potential coronavirus vaccine
In the worldwide race for a vaccine to stop the coronavirus, the laboratory sprinting fastest is at Oxford University, according to an article published this week by the NYT.
Most other teams have had to start with small clinical trials of a few hundred participants to demonstrate safety. But scientists at the university’s Jenner Institute had a head start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations — including one last year against an earlier coronavirus — were harmless to humans, the report says.
That has enabled them to leap ahead and schedule tests of their new coronavirus vaccine involving more than 6,000 people by the end of next month, hoping to show not only that it is safe, but also that it works.
According to the NYT, the Oxford scientists now say that with an emergency approval from regulators, the first few million doses of their vaccine could be available by September — at least several months ahead of any of the other announced efforts — if it proves to be effective.
Testing began in healthy volunteers in Britain last week, the latest in a cluster of early-stage studies in search of protection against the coronavirus.
University of Oxford researchers created the new vaccine by inserting genes for a spikey protein that studs the outer surface of the new coronavirus into another, harmless virus.
The idea: The immune system will spot the foreign protein and make antibodies to fight it, primed to react quickly if the person eventually is exposed to COVID-19.
These kinds of studies often give volunteers either the real vaccine or a dummy shot. But this experimental vaccine may briefly cause soreness and maybe a low fever — meaning if a dummy shot was the comparison, the participants might figure out who got the real thing, said Dr. Andrew Pollard, one of the Oxford chief researchers.
“That might influence people’s behavior, perhaps make them more likely to be exposed to the virus,” which in turn would make it harder to prove if the vaccine worked, Pollard told The Associated Press.
So the Oxford team decided half the volunteers will be given an old vaccine against another disease that offers no COVID-19 protection but has similar shot side effects.
“It seems like the right thing to do — to ensure that we can combat this disease and get over it a lot faster,” volunteer Edward O’Neill told the BBC afterward.
Dozens of vaccine candidates are in various stages of development around the world. Experts have cautioned that even if early studies go well, it will be at least a year before any are available for widespread use.
Among those making the fastest progress: China’s CanSino Biologics has begun the second phase of testing its vaccine candidate, made with an approach similar to Oxford’s.
Two U.S. companies are testing vaccines made from copies of a piece of the virus’s genetic code. Two other Chinese candidates are being pursued that use older technology. MDT/Agencies
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