US company trials coronavirus vaccine in Australia
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A U.S. biotechnology company announced on Tuesday the start of human trials in Australia of a vaccine for the coronarvirus with hopes of releasing a proven vaccine this year.
Novavax has begun the first phase of the trial in which 131 volunteers in the cities of Melbourne and Brisbane will test the safety of the vaccine and look for early signs of the vaccine’s effectiveness, the company’s research chief Dr. Gregory Glenn said.
“We are in parallel making doses, making vaccine in anticipation that we’ll be able to show it’s working and be able to start deploying it by the end of this year,” Glenn told a virtual press conference in Melbourne from Novavax’ headquarters in Maryland.
Animal testing suggested the vaccine is effective in low doses. Novavax could manufacture at least 100 million doses this year and 1.5 billion in 2021, he said.
Manufacture of the vaccine, named NVX-CoV2373, was being scaled up with $388 million invested by Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations since March, Glenn said.
About a dozen experimental vaccines are in early stages of testing or poised to start, mostly in China, the U.S. and Europe. It’s not clear that any of the candidates ultimately will prove safe and effective. But many work in different ways, and are made with different technologies, increasing the odds that at least one approach might succeed.
The results of the first phase of clinical trials in Australia are expected to be known in July, Novavax said. Thousands of candidates in several countries would then become involved in a second phase.
Most of the vaccine shots in the pipeline aim to train the immune system to recognize the “spike” protein that studs the coronavirus’ outer surface, priming the body to react if it ever encountered the real...
