A potential vaccine has proven to protect monkeys from pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the National Institutes of Health and University of Oxford.
The results have not been peer-reviewed, but a phase one trial began April 23 in healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom.
The pharmaceutical industry and health officials around the world are racing to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. President Trump said Friday that he enlisting the government, manufacturers and the military to secure a vaccine before the end of the year in his campaign, called “Operation Warp Speed.”
The vaccine was developed at the University of Oxford Jenner Institute. Oxford has partnered with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca for the further development, large-scale manufacturing and possible distribution of the vaccine.
In the study, six rhesus macaques were injected with a single dose of the vaccine called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 28 days before being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and compared to three control animals that did not receive the vaccine. The vaccinated animals showed no signs of virus replication in the lungs, significantly lower levels of respiratory disease and no lung damage compared to the control animals, NIH said Friday.
The researchers posted their data to the preprint server bioRxiv. The data can be found here.
The vaccine uses a replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 protein to induce a protective immune response. ChAdOx1 has been used to develop investigational vaccines against several pathogens, including the coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
The scientists adjusted the platform to SARS-CoV-2 when the first cases of COVID-19 appeared. The vaccine rapidly induced immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 in mice and rhesus macaques. The research team then tested the vaccine’s effectiveness on the macaques at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana.
• Shen Wu Tan can be reached at stan@washingtontimes.com.
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