Breaking

To Test Coronavirus Vaccines, UK Study Will Intentionally Infect Volunteers - The New York Times
Oct 20, 2020 1 min, 38 secs

The hotly contested strategy of deliberate exposure, known as a human challenge trial, could speed up the process of identifying effective coronavirus vaccines.

LONDON — Scientists at Imperial College London plan to deliberately infect volunteers with the coronavirus early next year, launching the world’s first effort to study how vaccinated people respond to being intentionally exposed to the virus and opening up a new, uncertain path to identifying an effective vaccine.

The hotly contested strategy, known as a human challenge trial, could potentially shave crucial time in the race to winnow a number of vaccine candidates.

Some vaccine candidates now undergoing trials may already have received approval by then, but researchers hope a challenge trial will add direct evidence of efficacy and help them compare the performance of different vaccines.

“Deliberately infecting volunteers with a known human pathogen is never undertaken lightly,” said Professor Peter Openshaw, an immunologist and co-investigator on the study.

The British government’s vaccine task force, which will select the first vaccine candidates to include in the human challenge trial, has not yet announced its plans.

The idea of human challenge trials has already been met with a lukewarm reception by several leading vaccine makers, including Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, leaving analysts uncertain as to which companies’ vaccines will end up being included.

And it is not yet clear how regulators in Europe or the United States will evaluate results from human challenge trials, or whether such studies will accelerate the vaccine approval process.

“I’m surprised they haven’t been used earlier,” Professor Julian Savulescu, the director of the Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics, said of human challenge trials on coronavirus vaccines.

Some scientists questioned whether the fierce competition to be the first to develop an effective vaccine had unduly influenced plans for a human challenge trial.

And some analysts said the treatment, while necessary, would limit researchers’ ability to determine whether the vaccine candidates being evaluated reduced the severity of illness

RECENT NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Get monthly updates and free resources.

CONNECT WITH US

© Copyright 2024 365NEWSX - All RIGHTS RESERVED