‘Ambitious’ vax target
UQ tests show promise so scientists aim for 2020 production
A UNIVERSITY of Queensland coronavirus vaccine could be in large-scale production by the September quarter.
Buoyed by the latest promising results in mice studies, UQ scientist Professor Trent Munro admitted having a vaccine in production before the end of the year was “incredibly ambitious” but that was the goal the UQ team had set itself.
The UQ researchers are among about 100 teams around the world working on vaccines to protect people against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which has killed 90 Australians and more than 218,000 people worldwide.
Professor Munro said scientists internationally were working with “an awful lot of collaboration” in the race to find a vaccine amid the worst pandemic in a century.
“People are sharing data faster than we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “Everyone’s trying to move as fast as they can.”
UQ scientists warn issues such as distribution, manufacturing it into vials and having enough data from human trials to receive regulatory approval would have to be worked out before people could start to be inoculated on a broadscale basis, with the elderly and frontline health workers likely to be prioritised.
“Our goal is to demonstrate scalability and to produce as many doses as we can and we’ve obviously done the calculations to think we can generate tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even potentially millions of doses,” Professor Munro said.
“What happens with those doses, what kind of people are able to use those … those questions remain. In the best case scenario, the vaccine will still not be available for wide scale use until the first half of 2021.”
Oxford University’s Jenner Institute began human trials of a candidate vaccine last week.
Another experimental vaccine developed by scientists at the US National Institutes of Health and collaborators at biotechnology company Moderna was first tested in humans in mid-March.
Molecular virologist Keith Chappell, who played a key role in the development of the UQ vaccine, said mice produced a strong immune response when injected with the vaccine in trials at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.
When blood from the mice, containing antibodies produced in response to the vaccine, was then mixed with SARS-CoV-2 in a laboratory dish, the virus was killed.
Dr Chappell said the strength of the antibody response seen in mice was much higher than observed in samples from “recovered patients who have experienced the disease”.