Scientist at Oxford University say they are proceeding into the third and critical phase of the trials for their highly awaited vaccine candidate for the coronavirus that is rampaging through the world seemingly unstoppably.
This phase three trial of the Oxford candidate also know as AZD1222 will involve 42,000 volunteers and the news comes at Moderna, the US based company is also preparing to begin its own phase three trials for its own vaccine candidate.
The report suggest the race to come up with a vaccine is going well and it is cheering news for a world shocked and traumatized by a virus pandemic which was first reported in Wuhan in China and has now engulfed all of the world.
Yesterday, the world health organization, WHO warned that coronavirus spread had become fast paced with the total number of confirmed cases in the world surging past 7.5 million and the cases in Africa doubling to over 200,000 in just 18 days.
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AstraZeneca the global pharmaceutical giant which is in a collaboration with Oxford University is already planning to make up to a million doses of the vaccine available from September this year.
The firm says it will be scaling up the manufacturing of the Oxford vaccine during the trials themselves, on a risk basis, and it would not be a surprise to see other companies doing something similar.
In January, the Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group began the development of a vaccine candidate, a recombinant vaccine called AZD1222, formerly known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.
The initial phase of testing involved 160 healthy volunteers between 18 to 55. The vaccine, which has now progressed to early-stage Phase 3 clinical trials, is made from a virus – a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that causes infections in chimpanzees – that has been genetically changed to stop replicating it in humans.
The researchers believe that the vaccine will make the body recognise and develop an immune response to the spike protein, thereby stopping the SARS-CoV-2 virus from entering human cells and preventing infection. AstraZeneca, which is developing the vaccine in partnershio with Oxford University, said that it has begun mass production of the AZD1222 jab in factories.
