University of Oxford
Clinical teams at the Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group began developing the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine in January, now named AZD1222 since a manufacturing partnership with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca was secured.
Human trials started on April 23 and they are now in the final phase.
Lead of the project Professor Sarah Gilbert told The Times she is ’80 per cent’ confident of its success.
Imperial College London
Professor Robin Shattock is leading a team working to produce a vaccine at Imperial College.
Fifteen volunteers have already been given the trial vaccines and testing is expected to ramp up to include as many as 200-300 new participants in the coming weeks.
A second trial, involving 6,000 people, will come later.
But Professor Shattock said the vaccine won’t be available until at least 2021 even if everything goes according to plan.
If the jab works, the team want to make it as cheap as possible so the entire British population could be vaccinated for the ‘really good value’ of just under £200million.
Moderna
Massachusetts-based Moderna was the first US company to start human trials of its potential Covid-19 vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, on March 16.
The jab has proven to trigger an immune response in all 45 injected volunteers, according to a study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine on July 14.
Moderna’s shot showed early promise in its phase 2 human tests last month. The company reported that it triggered antibody production on par with that seen in recovered coronavirus patients.
CanSino
Chinese vaccine Ad5-nCoV, made by CanSino, was the very first shot to enter clinical trials earlier this year and is a leading candidate.
A trial of 108 healthy volunteers in China showed it safely triggered an immune response in participants.
Results published May 22 in The Lancet showed most of the people dosed with the vaccine had immune responses, although their levels of antibodies thought to neutralize the virus were relatively low. Researchers saw a stronger ramp-up of other immune compounds, called T-cells, that might also help fight the infection off.
Pfizer
Pfizer and BioNTech have been working on a number of potential Covid-19 vaccines under the ‘BNT162 program’.
It reported positive preliminary results from the ongoing Phase I/II clinical trial of one called BNT162b1 on July 1.
Data is available for the trial of BNT162b1 on 24 volunteers. The results showed that it was well tolerated and produced dose dependent immunity.
Dr Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, said the vaccine ‘is able to produce neutralizing antibody responses in humans at or above the levels observed’ in Covid-19 survivors.
Pfizer received fast track designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for two of their four potential Covid-19 vaccines this month.
Johnson & Johnson
The drug giant started work on the vaccine in January, two months before Covid-19 was labelled a global pandemic.
A vaccine trial spearheaded by Johnson and Johnson will start recruiting people in September, with clinical data available by the end of the year.
An ’emergency use’ batch of the vaccine is anticipated to be authorised as early as 2021, which would likely be prioritised for vulnerable people.