Updated: Friday, 5/22/2020 9:45 am
Moderna, the Massachusetts biotechnology company behind a leading effort to create a coronavirus vaccine, published positive data from its phase one human trial on its potential vaccine. The National Institutes of Health has partnered with Moderna to accelerate development of their vaccine candidate. The company plans to launch a large clinical trial in July aimed at showing whether the vaccine works.
The company reported that in eight patients who had been followed for a month and a half, the vaccine at low and medium doses triggered blood levels of virus-fighting (neutralizing) antibodies that were similar or greater than those found in COVID-19 patients who recovered. That would suggest, but doesn’t prove, that it triggers some level of immunity.
The neutralizing antibody-rich blood plasma donated by patients who have recovered is separately being tested to determine whether it is an effective therapy or preventive measure for Covid-19.
The vaccine uses a new process that is much faster than older methods of making vaccines. The vaccine includes a short segment of messenger RNA (mRNA) that is made in a lab and codes for the viral spike protein. It does not include any form of live virus, and the trial does not expose participants to the virus.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NPR that “I think it is conceivable, if we don’t run into things that are, as they say, unanticipated setbacks, that we could have a vaccine that we could be beginning to deploy at the end of this calendar year, December 2020, or into January, 2021”.
Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University professor of medicine told CNBC that a Covid-19 vaccine could be ready for distribution by the end of 2020 but cautioned that it’s an unprecedented timeline. Effectively, “…in a 65-day window, researchers have isolated and identified the virus and begun testing a potential vaccine on humans”, Dr. del Rio said. “That has never, ever occurred before.”
Moderna’s study is being carried out at Atlanta’s Emory University’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit and the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding construction of factories for the 7 most promising Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/18/coronavirus-vaccine-first-results/
Antibodies are one of the ways the human body fights infection from the coronavirus. Researchers believe testing for covid-19 antibodies can lead to a virus treatment.
Small-cap biotech company Sorrento Therapeutics (SRNE) CEO Dr. Henry Ji announced that Sorrento had discovered an anti-SARS-Cov-2 antibody, dubbed STI-1499, that has demonstrated 100% inhibition of COVID-19 in an in vitro infection experiment at a very low antibody concentration and flushed out what’s also known as the virus from the body within four days.
Dr. Ji claims this is a cure, saying, “We want to emphasize there is a cure. There is a solution that works 100%. If we have the neutralizing antibody in your body, you don’t need the social distancing. You can open up a society without fear.” This antibody works by blocking the coronavirus’ spike proteins from attaching to a receptor on the surface of health surface called ACE2.
Sorrento said it will continue testing the product in the hopes of getting it approved to treat COVID-19.
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