The race for a coronavirus vaccine received boost on Monday
following “positive interim results” in a trial on humans by a United
States-based company.
Moderna, the biotechnology company leading effort to create
the vaccine, announced the positive outcome from its first human safety tests
carried out in eight patients.
It said in the patients who were monitored for a month and a
half, doses of the vaccine triggered blood levels of virus-fighting antibodies
that were similar or greater than those found in patients who recovered.
The company said it plans to launch a large clinical trial
in July to confirm the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, was quoted as
saying if the trials go well, a vaccine could become available for widespread
use by the end of this year or early 2021.
“These interim Phase 1 data, while early, demonstrate that
vaccination with mRNA-1273 elicits an immune response of the magnitude caused
by natural infection starting with a dose as low as 25 µg,” Zaks also said.
“When combined with the success in preventing viral
replication in the lungs of a pre-clinical challenge model at a dose that
elicited similar levels of neutralising antibodies, these data substantiate our
belief that mRNA-1273 has the potential to prevent COVID-19 disease and advance
our ability to select a dose for pivotal trials.”
Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna, added
that the company is aiming to scale up manufacturing “so we can maximise the
number of doses we can produce to help protect as many people as we can from
SARS-CoV-2.”
The US Food and Drug Administration already gave the company
approval to begin the phase two clinical trials.
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