50,000 volunteers could hold the key to finding vaccine by end of this year
HOPES of a coronavirus vaccine by Christmas have been boosted after Oxford University researchers said they could collect enough data to approach regulators this year.
Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said it was “just possible” that trials involving 50,000 people may yield conclusive results in coming months.
The promising update came after England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty, warned a vaccine may not be ready until next winter.
Prof Pollard said: “I think that ChrisWhitty is quite rightly being cautious, that it could take as long as that to first of all demonstrate a vaccine works
and is safe and then to go through the processes of regulators looking at that very carefully to make sure everything’s been done correctly.
“But it is also just possible that, if the cases accrue rapidly in the clinical trials, that we could have that data to put before regulators this year, and then there would be a process that they go through in order to make a full assessment.”
Asked about the timing of a possible vaccine, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “That depends very much on the number of cases that occur in the weeks and months ahead.
“Even with 1,000 people eventually you’ll have enough information to know whether or not a vaccine works, but that could take years.
“So, having 20,000 people in our trials already means that that period of time will be shorter, but unfortunately I can’t quite predict the future about how many cases are going to occur.”
Scientists have been in a race against time to collect trial data, with falling infection rates in the UK hampering efforts.
Tests on the first volunteers given the vaccine showed a strong immune response, in both antibodies and T cells.
Hopeful
But Prof Pollard explained that after proving it was safe “you want to be able to show whether the vaccine works, and the size of the trial actually is determined largely by what the attack rate of the disease is in the study population”.
Professor Sir John Bell, of the
Oxford University team, also said this week: “I’m hopeful we are going to start to get a readout early in the autumn as to whether this thing works or not.”
The vaccine is being developed with Cambridgebased firm AstraZeneca, which has struck a deal to provide 100 million doses for the UK.
Trials underway in Britain, Brazil and South Africa will involve around 20,000 people and AstraZeneca plans to enrol
a further 30,000 in the US. Earlier this week it was reported that US President Donald Trump was considering granting emergency authorisation for the Oxford vaccine.
Prof Pollard said the emergency use process – which allows treatments before the full approval is complete – was well established but still required robust data.
He said: “We would expect to first of all have safety data and then evidence that the
vaccine actually works. And before anything were to progress from there and of course it’d be AstraZeneca who would then take that forward to regulators.”
AstraZeneca said it had not discussed emergency use with the US government. It added: “We do not anticipate efficacy results until later this year.”
The firm also announced that the first volunteers have been dosed in trials of an antibody treatment to prevent and treat Covid-19. Known as AZD7442, is a combination of two monoclonal antibodies which mimic the body’s natural antibodies.
The trial includes up to 48 healthy UK volunteers aged 18 to 55 and will look at the safety of the treatment, as well as the body’s reaction to the drug and how it processes it.
America’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has called monoclonal antibodies “almost a sure bet”.