Early Research Encouraging On Two Potential Coronavirus Vaccines
LONDON (CBSMiami) – COVID-19 continues its stronghold in the state of Florida but there could be some good news on a potential vaccine. New preliminary research is encouraging on two coronavirus vaccines being developed outside the United States.
Researchers are having promising results with an experimental vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
The study in The Lancet looked at more than 1,000 healthy adults and found the vaccine induced strong antibody and immune responses.
"What this vaccine does particularly well is trigger both arms of the immune system, so in addition to neutralizing antibodies, which other vaccines do, we also see a very strong t-cell response," explained Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University.
Researchers saw the strongest immune response in the 10 people who got two doses.
Half the people in the study got the coronavirus vaccine. The other half got a meningitis vaccine. People who had the COVID vaccine had side effects including fever, chills, and muscle pain, more often than the other group.
"They gave a small number of individuals the equivalent of Tylenol, called paracetamol in the UK, and that lessened the symptoms quite significantly to make them more tolerable without compromising the immune responses," said Dr. Barry Bloom with Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Now researchers will enroll tens of thousands of patients to see if the vaccine is able to protect people from COVID-19.
Last week, a study on the experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health showed it was well tolerated and prompted an immune response with no serious adverse events.
The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine is taking part in the Phase 3 trial of the Moderna vaccine and seeking volunteers.
"Vaccines remain the world's best hope at controlling this epidemic," Dr. Bloom said.
Researchers are currently testing more than 20 coronavirus vaccines in people around the world.
Another study published in The Lancet also found another experimental vaccine from China was safe and induced an immune response.
