At Medical News Today, we have actually been looking at how clinical advances are offering much-needed hope throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This Unique Feature discusses the recent development of vaccine clinical trials and other ways in which researchers hope to fight the brand-new coronavirus.
What are the shining beacons at this unsure time? This is a question that we, at MNT, have actually been asking ourselves.
To try to answer it, every other week, we evaluate the latest coronavirus research and present our readers with the most promising and reassuring findings from scientific studies.
Last fortnight, in the Special Feature entitled COVID-19: Vaccine may be ready by fall and other factors for hope, we spoke about how researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK prepared to start medical trials for a new vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, wanting to have it ready by fall 2020.
In this Special Feature, we discuss how those plans have actually progressed and take a look at other steps that experts have been taking to put an end to the pandemic.
On April 23, the University of Oxford announced the launch of the U.K.’s first human trial for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
The researchers expect that the trial will include about 1,100 volunteers, half of whom will receive the actual speculative vaccine while the other half receive a vaccine for meningitis, functioning as controls. The participants will not understand which of the two they have actually received.
The experimental vaccine need to promote the immune system to recognize and respond to SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, which permits it to get in and contaminate healthy cells.
A week back, the first 2 volunteers got the shot. Both of them are researchers who were eager to contribute in some way to the efforts to combat the new coronavirus.
Among the volunteers, Edward O’Neill, Ph.D., who works in the department of oncology at the University of Oxford, has stated in an interview that taking part in the early phase of this clinical trial “just seems like the best thing to do, to ensure that we can fight this illness a little and overcome it a lot faster.”
The other pioneering participant, Elisa Granato, Ph.D.– from the department of zoology at the university– has revealed a comparable sentiment, stating, “I’m a researcher, so obviously I want to try and support science […], and considering that I don’t study infections, I felt a bit ineffective nowadays, so I felt this [taking part in the trial] is a really simple way for me to support the cause.”
A few days after getting the shot, Granato sent out a public message reassuring everyone that she was succeeding.
Prof. Sarah Gilbert, who is from the Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research Study in Oxford and led the research study leading to this trial, has actually said that she trusts that the vaccine will be an effective endeavor:
” Personally, I have a high degree of self-confidence in this vaccine.”
The researchers expect that it will take 2– 6 months to verify whether the vaccine is safe and working as they hope that it will.
Current reports suggest that scientists around the world are presently explore 8 various types of possible vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 which scientists are working on at least 90 vaccines right now.
The one that the University of Oxford researchers are trialing is protein-based. It consists of an inactivated or deteriorated virus– in this case, an adenovirus– that functions as a “assistance” for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and should set off an action from the immune system, “teaching” it to react to that protein.
Another type of vaccine uses suspended variations of SARS-CoV-2 but has a comparable end goal: to “teach” the immune system to recognize and combat the infection.
On April 19, researchers related to the Chinese biotechnology company Sinovac Biotech reported having successfully inoculated rhesus macaques with suspended SARS-CoV-2, securing them from the brand-new coronavirus, which, according to some researchers, could impact nonhuman primates along with humans.
In the preliminary research study– the results of which they offered online in preprint type– the scientists tested their inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, which they call PiCoVacc, in a group of eight rhesus macaque monkeys.
This experiment followed previous tests in mice and rats. When it concerned the rhesus macaques, the scientists picked them because, they state, this species can dev