For early and mid-level randomized controlled vaccine trial, a team led by Oxford professor Sarah Gilbert has recruited 500 volunteers aged 18 to 55. Through September, the goal is to produce positive results, and development is already underway. It will then be extended to older adults and a final 5,000 individual study. The time frame is ambitious but achievable, Gilbert said.
In an interview, she cited that a few doses will be ready for use by September. She says it will not be enough everywhere by then, but the more development from now on, the more doses will be available.
She said there were sufficient applicants for participation in the trial, and no new subjects are needed.
The trial divides 510 participants into five groups, with the possibility of a follow-up visit around a year after the testing is completed. Four weeks after the initial immunization, one group will receive a second intramuscular vaccine shot.
This research seeks to identify the effectiveness, safety, and immunogensity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 candidate vaccine. Participants that are randomly selected for monitoring purposes will be given a meningococcal disease vaccine.
In March, the United Kingdom National Institute of Health Research, and UK Research and Innovation awarded Gilbert, whose vaccine work was launched by the University of Oxford in 1994, a £2.2 million ($2.8 million) grant to step up her team’s efforts to move into Covid-19 vaccinal study.
The group’s experimental immunization is among the first to enter clinical trials. There are 70 vaccine candidates in production, and three others in clinical trials count the World Health Organization. These clinical trials come from CanSino Biological Inc. and the Beijing Biotechnology Institute, Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Moderna Inc. along with the National Allergy and Infectious Diseases Institute.
