AstraZeneca rejoined the race to bring a Covid-19 vaccine. AstraZeneca said that the interim results showed the COVID-19 vaccine had produced an immune response in both older adults, the age group at highest risk from the disease, as well as younger adults, in the Phase 2 study. AstraZeneca is producing the vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The potential vaccine, AZD1222, triggers protective antibodies and T-cells in older age groups. The interim results further build on preliminary data from the Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials published in July in the medical journal, The Lancet. The trial, which involved 1,077 healthy participants aged 18 to 55, showed that the vaccine induced two forms of human immune response generating antibodies and T-cells — for at least 56 days.
A Covid vaccine’s protection of older people is an important merit, since that population risks more complications from an infection. Despite the trial’s September pause to examine an illness in a U.K. participant, the trial sponsors said Monday that they were seeing few worrisome adverse reactions to the shots. A more complete report on the interim results will appear soon in a scientific journal.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate use the more established technique of ferrying an immune-stimulating cargo into cells using a neutralized virus. Their Phase 3 trial results might be ready around year-end. Good results from a vaccine trial would probably lead within weeks to an emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Then it would take months for vaccination to expand out from initial groups in high-risk professions, to the elderly and then to the population at large. AstraZeneca, along with Pfizer and Moderna, are among the front runners to produce Covid-19 vaccine across the globe amid the increasing spread of the disease. AstraZeneca was cleared by US regulators to restart its trials in the country for over a month. The US Food and Drug Administration authorised the trial to resume on Friday, according to statements issued from AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
