The vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and scientists from the University of Oxford against covid-19 is safe and leads to a strong reaction of the immune system. This is evident from the first test results in healthy volunteers, which were shared in the medical journal The Lancet.
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The vaccine, which was given the name AZD1222, did not cause serious side effects in the first tests in 1,077 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55. In addition, the immune system was activated by the vaccine.
Specifically, the vaccine teaches the immune system to recognize the coronavirus. This is done in two ways: via T cells and via antibodies. The researchers report that within two weeks of vaccination, the body’s so-called T cells can detect the coronavirus and attack infected cells. Within 28 days of vaccination, the subjects also made antibodies that can detect and fight the virus in the blood and lymphatic system.
“We hope this means that the immune system will remember the virus, so that our vaccine protects people for a longer period of time,” British researcher Andrew Pollard explained in The Lancet.
‘Promising results’
“Much work remains to be done before we can confirm that our vaccine may be one of the solutions to the Covid-19 pandemic, but these initial results are very encouraging,” said vaccine developer Sarah Gilbert.
According to the researchers, the immune system response may be even greater after a second dose. “But we still don’t know how hard the immune system must respond to protect us efficiently against a sars-CoV-2 infection.”
Phase 1 of human testing
Before a medicine can be placed on the market, it must be extensively tested. This is done first with test tubes, cultured cells and possibly laboratory animals.
The promising drugs are then also tested on humans. This happens in three phases. First, researchers test the correct dose and whether there are any side effects. The tests are then expanded and the results compared with control groups. After the third stage, supervisors must decide whether to approve a product. AZD1222’s tests are now in phase 3, but The Lancet published the results of phase 1.
400 million doses have already been ordered
Britain has already ordered 100 million doses of the potential vaccine. France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have set up a partnership to order 300 million doses of the vaccine to supply the European market from early 2021.
AstraZeneca and the UK University are among the candidate vaccines most advanced to respond to the corona pandemic. In the meantime, it claimed more than 600,000 lives worldwide.
Competition for the British-Swedish AstraZeneca comes, among other things, from candidate vaccines developed by the Chinese Sinovac Biotech, the Chinese state-owned Sinopharm and the American biotech company Moderna.
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