There is hope for a cure for the deadly coronavirus as the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany, in separate studies, yesterday announced the commencement of human trials of potential vaccines against the novel Covid-19. The German regulatory body, Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI), yesterday gave the green light for human trials of the vaccine. According to a report published by a journal, Advanced Science, the UK trial is being carried out at Oxford University and is the result of a joint effort by pharmaceutical giants GSK and Sanofi. It will involve 510 volunteers aged between 18 and 55 in the first phase.
Led in part by Oxford’s Jenner Institute, the U.K. vaccine candidate uses a modified chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector which is given the genetic material that encodes the novel coronavirus’ spike proteins. When the vaccine vector expresses these proteins inside the human body, the immune system is primed and ready to react to any real infection of the coronavirus.
German company BioNTech, in collaboration with Pfizer, is carrying out the trial scheduled to start at the end of April. This is a different candidate that is known as an RNA vaccine. The trial will also involve healthy volunteers between 18 and 55 in the first phase, with the hope to include volunteers from high-risk groups in the second phase. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of BioNTech, UgurSahin, told a press conference that he expected the German trial to start collecting its first data “at the end of June or beginning of July.” Also, scientists developing a second coronavirus vaccine in the U.K. will soon start recruiting volunteers for clinical trials to begin in June.
A lab at Imperial College, London was yesterday pledged £22.5million by Health Secretary Matt Hancock for its efforts to make a jab to protect against COVID-19. It plans to begin human experiments in around six weeks’ time and will follow in the footsteps of a University of Oxford project, which starts testing tomorrow.
While the Oxford vaccine will try to stimulate the immune system using a common cold virus taken from chimps, the researchers at Imperial are using droplets of liquid to carry the genetic material they need to get into the bloodstream. Both will then work, in theory, by recreating parts of the coronavirus inside the patient and forcing their immune system to learn how to fight it. Hancock yesterday said his department was ‘throwing everything’ at the race for Britain to become the first country in the world to make a coronavirus vaccine and promised £44.5million of extra funding for the two universities.
Furthermore, one of the leaders of the study, Prof. Andrew Pollard, said his team planned to make one million doses of the vaccine available in the U.K. as early as September, far ahead of the 12 to 18-month schedule that has been given by scientists so far. “That is of course if the trials starting today are successful. The PEI acknowledged in a press release that they expect more trials of vaccines candidates to take place in Germany in the next few months, all in the hopes that at least one of these vaccines works and can be produced en masse and made available globally.
“The difference between these two vaccines shows how we are still in the early stages of understanding how this virus works, but with a more diverse range of vaccines, it is hoped that eventually, we will be successful in bringing an end to this pandemic,” Pollard said. Professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, Sarah Gilbert, told The Times of London she was “80 per cent confident” the vaccine being developed by her team would work. It is hoped about a million doses could be ready by September.
In a related development, scientists around the world have continued to study two drugs- chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine- for their potential as possible treatment approaches for illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Yet as new data emerge out of such research, so do some concerns about the efficacy and safety of the drugs when used to treat COVID-19. There have been early indications that these drugs may be effective in treating or preventing COVID-19, but the medications have not endured the due diligence of extensive clinical trials and there have been growing concerns about the impact chloroquine and the closely related hydroxychloroquine can have specifically on the heart.
Now, a chloroquine trial in Brazil has been cut short, hospitals in Sweden have been cautioned against using the drugs for COVID-19 and American cardiology groups have urged doctors to be aware of “potentially serious implications” when used for people with existing cardiovascular disease.
Currently, there is no treatment for COVID-19 approved by the US Food and Drug Administration but the agency has issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat patients. In Nigeria, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) is presently conducting clinical trials on the use of chloroquine to treat COVID-19.
