Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker LIVE: The University of Cambridge is aiming to start clinical trials of its possible coronavirus vaccine in the autumn after it received 1.9 million pounds in funding from the British government, the university said today. The scientists behind the vaccine said their approach, which uses genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses to hone the immune response, could help avoid the adverse effects of a hyper-inflammatory immune response.
Here are the latest updates on the coronavirus treatment:
• Tamil Nadu’s Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and Sri Ramachandra Hospital will join the Oxford University in conducting human clinical trials of ‘Covishield’ on nearly 300 health volunteers aged 18 and above. This will be part of the multi-centric clinical trial in India, according to state health minister Dr C Vijaya Bhaskar. This vaccine, developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca, is considered the most promising to be successful and is undergoing phase-3 trials in some other countries.
• The mayor of Moscow invited residents to join trials of a coronavirus vaccine that Russia approved for use earlier this month in what officials described as a breakthrough on par with the Soviet Union’s launch of the world’s first satellite in 1957. The world’s first vaccine against the COVID-19 to receive a government go-ahead has caused unease among international medical experts, who called Russia’s fast-tracked approval and failure to share any data supporting claims of the vaccine’s efficacy a major breach of scientific protocol.
• The Phase II human clinical trial of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine candidate, being manufactured by the city-based Serum Institute of India (SII), began at a medical college and hospital here on Wednesday. Two male volunteers were administered the vaccine at Bharti Vidyapeeth’s Medical College and Hospital, a senior office-bearer of the hospital said
• Jonathan Heeney, head of the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics at the University of Cambridge, said: “We’re looking for chinks in its armour, crucial pieces of the virus that we can use to construct the vaccine to direct the immune response in the right direction. Ultimately we aim to make a vaccine that will not only protect from SARS-CoV-2, but also other related coronaviruses that may spill over from animals to humans.”
• No vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus which causes COVID-19 has yet been proven clinically effective, though 30 that use a range of technologies are in human trials already. The Cambridge candidate, DIOS-CoVax2, is DNA based. Computer-generated antigen structures are encoded by synthetic genes, which can then re-programme the body’s immune system to produce antibodies against the coronavirus. This DNA vector method has been shown to be safe and effective at stimulating an immune response in other pathogens in early stage trials, the university said.
• Although it is operating at a later timetable than some other vaccine candidates, the DIOS-CoVax2 shot would not need to be stored at cold temperatures and could be delivered without needles, possibly making the widespread distribution of the vaccine easier. “This could be a major breakthrough in being able to give a future vaccine to huge numbers of people across the world,” said Saul Faust, Director of the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility.
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