UK and Germany Begin Clinical Trials for SARS CoV2 Vaccine
A clinical trial for a coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by researchers at the University of Oxford will begin today in the U.K. The start of human testing in the U.K. coincides with Germany’s regulator, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, giving German biotech BioNTech and partner Pfizer the green light to start the first coronavirus vaccine clinical trial in the country.
The first part of the clinical study in Germany will test variants of the vaccine in 200 healthy volunteers aged 18–55 years. The second part of the study will be expanded to include volunteers who are at an increased risk of infection or increased risk of serious COVID-19 disease.
Vaccine development usually takes more than five years. We can’t wait that long for this one, and the researchers are working under a 12–18 months development timeline that will pre-clinical and clinical evaluation, and manufacturing process development.
