The University of Oxford has some good news for everyone who is waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine. Their candidate for the coronavirus vaccine, which is currently in human trials, is showing promising results and is triggering an immune response.
Oxford Delivers Good News
According to a report by AP News, their trial began in April and included 1,077 people, with half of them injected with their coronavirus vaccine candidate.
Those who received the experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed T-cells and antibodies that can fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus or the novel coronavirus as more people know it, giving a hugely promising result.
Based on the report, early human trials were often done to see if the vaccine is safe for human use, but since time is of the essence, researchers from Oxford also used the opportunity to see whether it helps protect the volunteers against the virus and if it triggers any sort of immune response.
"We are seeing good immune response in almost everybody," said Dr. Adrian Hill, the Jenner Institute director at Oxford. "What this vaccine does particularly well is trigger both arms of the immune system."
The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Lancet this Monday, July 20.
Experimental COVID-19 Triggers Immune Response
According to the scientists, the experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced both antibodies and T-cells on people aged 18 to 56, and it lasted two months after the volunteers were immunized.
Nevertheless, the experimental vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, causes minor side effects like chills, fever, and muscle pain more often than those who received the control meningitis vaccine.
Hill said the level of immune response triggered by the experimental vaccine is comparable to the level of antibodies that people who recover from the viral infection develop.
He also hoped that the T-cells would offer additional protection against the disease.
To ensure that the vaccine would work well against COVID-19, a much larger trial consisting of 10,000 people from the UK, South Africa, and Brazil is currently happening.
The researchers from Oxford are also planning an even bigger trial that will be happening in the US, the country with the most COVID-19 cases in the world, that aims to enroll around 30,000 volunteers.
Where Did the Vaccine Come From?
The rate at which the researchers could determine the experimental vaccine's effectiveness will depend on the virus' transmission, but Hill believes they would have enough data by the end of the year to know whether their coronavirus vaccine candidate could be used for mass vaccination campaigns around the world.
However, the BBC reported that the UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine so they could offer mass vaccinations as soon as the clinical trials prove to be positive.
According to the news outlet, the COVID-19 vaccine was made from a genetically engineered virus that causes common colds in chimpanzees and was heavily engineered so it won't be infectious and to make it "look" more coronavirus.
Oxford has partnered with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to produce the vaccine globally, with the drug maker committing to making 2 billion doses.
