Oxford Scientists Take Early Lead in Race to Create Vaccine
a vaccine for
the coronavirus well ahead of the standard medical timeline.
The scientists have expressed confidence in their ability to do
it quickly, raising hopes around the world that a vaccine will not have
to wait until next year.
The first injections of the vaccine being developed by the
university’s Jenner Institute in Britain took place last
week. Scientists are planning to massively scale up their testing in a
little over a month, a time frame that is currently faster than other
vaccine development efforts.
The New York Times reported Monday that the scientists plan to test their vaccine on more than 6,000 people by the end of May.
The team at Oxford said their aim is to produce a million doses of
the vaccine, if it proves effective, by September — months ahead of a
standard timeline of 12 to18 months routinely quoted by health
professionals around the world.
Professor Sarah Gilbert, team leader of the program, said she is "80% confident” the vaccine will work.
Early trials promising
Because of that confidence, Britain has begun allocating funds for
large-scale development, a move that is financially risky if the vaccine
turns out to be ineffective.
"We are going to back them to the hilt and give them every resource
they need to give them the best chance of success,” Britain’s Health
Secretary Matt Hancock said last week.
The researchers’ confidence comes in part from the knowledge that the
vaccine’s basic components have been genetically engineered to be
harmless against humans and have been found to be safe in earlier
trials.
Initial experiments also indicate the vaccine is effective, including
tests that show it can generate a strong immune response in rhesus
macaque monkeys.
The vaccine has been made from a common cold virus that has been
modified so it cannot grow in people. Scientists have added proteins
from the coronavirus that they hope will trigger the human immune system
to produce antibodies against the protein, which will then protect
against the actual virus.
Trials of the virus’s base components have been ongoing for years as
part of an effort to find a malaria vaccine. Gilbert used the same
modified virus to make a vaccine against an earlier coronavirus, MERS.
Clinical trials of that vaccine are promising.
A traditional vaccine uses a weakened version of a virus to trigger
an immune response in humans, and great care must be taken to ensure it
is not only effective in humans but also safe.
A major reason the Oxford vaccine can quickly move through trials is that its base components have already undergone rigorous testing in humans.
FILE - In this March 19, 2020, photo, laboratory scientist Andrea Luquette cultures coronavirus to prepare for testing at U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.
Challenges
While early indications show the new vaccine is promising, one
complication for the trials could paradoxically be the success of
efforts to limit the spread of the disease in Britain.
For the vaccine data to be effective, subjects must be shown not to
contract COVID-19 from their surroundings. However, if the disease is
not spreading naturally around them, the trial might not be able to
show whether the vaccine is making a difference, or it might take longer
to reach conclusions.
Researchers say if they cannot get conclusive results in Britain,
they might have to begin new trials in another part of the world where
the virus is spreading more rapidly.
Ethics guidelines generally prohibit scientists from injecting healthy patients with a serious disease.
There are more than 100 efforts around the world to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, but only a few have begun human trials.
U.S.-based Moderna was the first company to begin small clinical trials in March, but larger human trials have not begun.
Other efforts have come from the Chinese company CanSino, and a
partnership between German biotech company BioNTech and U.S.
pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
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