Volunteers to be infected
In a controversial plan, British researchers are preparing to infect healthy young volunteers with the new coronavirus to aid work on a vaccine.
LONDON – U.K. researchers are preparing to infect healthy young volunteers with the virus that causes COVID-19, becoming the first to announce plans to use the controversial technique to study the disease and potentially speed development of a vaccine that could help end the pandemic.
Such research, known as a human challenge study, is used infrequently because some consider the risk involved in infecting otherwise healthy individuals to be unethical.
But researchers racing to combat COVID-19 say the risk is warranted because such studies have the potential to quickly identify the most effective vaccines and help control a disease that has killed more than 1.1 million people worldwide.
“Deliberately infecting volunteers with a known human pathogen is never undertaken lightly,” said Professor Peter Openshaw, co-investigator on the study.
“However, such studies are enormously informative about a disease, even one so well studied as COVID-19.”
Human challenge studies have been previously used to develop vaccines for diseases including typhoid, cholera and malaria.
Imperial College London said Tuesday that the study, involving volunteers aged 18 to 30, would be conducted in partnership with the government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and hVIVO, a company that has experience conducting challenge studies.
The government plans to invest
$43.4 million in the research.
Governments around the world are funding efforts to develop a vaccine in hopes of ending the pandemic that has pummeled the international economy, shut businesses and put millions of people out of work. Forty-six potential vaccines are already in human testing, with 11 in late-stage trials. Results from several are expected this year or in early 2021.
The Imperial College partnership expects to begin work in January, with results expected by May. Before research begins, the study must be approved by ethics committees and regulators.
While one or more vaccines are likely to be approved before then, the study will still be relevant because the world may need multiple vaccines to adequately protect different groups within the population, as well as treatments for those who continue to get sick, said Dr. Michael Jacobs, a consultant in infectious diseases at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust who will take part in the research.
“I don’t think many people think that what we’re doing as scientists is searching for a silver bullet,” Jacobs said. “We’re going to need a whole raft of interventions in order to control this pandemic.”
Tens of thousands of volunteers around the world have already signed up to participate in more traditional trials of COVID-19 vaccines.
Critics of challenge studies question the need to expose healthy people to the virus when the disease remains widespread and vaccine development is moving quickly.