United Kingdom’s top experts believe a trial at University of Oxford could give a crucial indication as early as next month on whether the world is on track for an early vaccine for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), which,in a best-case scenario, could be developed as soon as this year.
The vaccine being developed at Oxford is one of four that has progressed to clinical trials – the first stage of a vaccine being tested on humans – but it accounts for the largest sample size, making it one of the most watched among all efforts.
“The crucial thing is you have to do a proper trial because safety is really important for these things. But if we can see evidence of a strong immune response by the middle or the end of May, then I think the game is on. And they may well get across the finish line by mid-August,” Oxford University professor of medicine, John Bell, told BBC.
Bell is part of a task force UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma announced on Friday while earmarking millions of pounds for vaccine development.
Till now, the consensus among researchers is that a vaccine is likely to take 12-18 months before it is approved for public.
{{/usCountry}}Till now, the consensus among researchers is that a vaccine is likely to take 12-18 months before it is approved for public.
{{/usCountry}}Bell added that the UK currently does not have the capacity to produce the amount of vaccine it needs to tackle coronavirus, but “is in a really good place” for vaccine development.
“One of the reasons that we were rushing is to try and catch this wave of the disease. Because when the disease goes away there will be very, very few incident cases until we get a second wave,” Bell said in his comments to BBC.
According to the World Health Organization’s April 11 compilation of vaccine development efforts, there are 70 projects that researchers are working on across the world. In addition to the Oxford University vaccine trial, the others include Moderna, Inovio and CanSino that have begun recruiting members for clinical trials.
The Oxford trial will include up to 550 subjects split into several groups, far larger than any of the others.
Most of these are in the first phase of trials with healthy volunteers, and the goal is to determine the drug’s most frequent and serious side effects and, often, how the drug is broken down and excreted by the body.
This is the first of multiple steps in the clinical trial process for evaluating the potential benefit of a vaccine.
Researchers and philanthropists have also launched an unprecedented effort to speed up production for when a vaccine is finally developed.
Billionaire philanthropist and former Microsoft boss Bill Gates announced his foundation will fund the production of seven vaccine candidates even before they are cleared. “Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven just so we don’t waste time,” he said last month.