Preparation of corona virus

    

Corona virus Vaccine

 

Today we will talk on the phase one trial in just over a thousand people of this vaccine designed by Oxford University and now uh partnered with

AstraZeneca and the results are good we're seeing a good safety profile across a large number of people and very importantly we're seeing strong

Immune responses what does it mean for a potential timeline what are the next steps if the immune responses are strong that suggests that the vaccine is

more likely to work it doesn't prove that it will but we try and extrapolate from preclinical data from all the clues we can work out from what we're

Seeing in the immunological detail and frankly we're encouraged in terms of timeline it doesn't really change that we said that we were aiming for

Roundabout late third quarter early fourth quarter of this year to get a first read on efficacy and that's still the goal but we do need enough cases in our

Trials to be able to determine whether the vaccine is preventing cases in the vaccines so that's still maybe October time something like that is it also

difficult in the testing Adrian to figure out okay we know that the fatality rate for younger people is statistically not zero but it's extremely low I think the

cdc here in the united states of the 121 000 or so pure covid fatalities 844 

have been under the age of 34. so 0.6 uh statistically obviously every one of

those the life that we care about i'm not minimizing any of those what I’m saying is are you able to find enough at-risk members of the population who

are willing to undergo these vaccine trials we are not exposing people in the current trial or in any planned trial to more covert than they would get by

natural exposure there is this idea of deliberately infecting people known as a challenge trial which is gaining increasing interest from funders and from agencies around the world.

 

         

Vaccine on trials and its tests

 

I emphasize that has not started yet whether it would be safe I think it probably would be is being discussed and of course how safe it is depends on

How you do it how low a dose of challenge virus might be needed and whether you have some treatments available and in the coming months that's going to be discussed extensively and it may be a fast way to getting data on

whether the vaccine gives an effect gives protection in young people as you say and very young people would be likely the subjects because they're at a

lower risk of severe disease but that's not what what's happening today we're reporting on a large vaccine trial in 18 to 55 year olds in the uk showing that

the vaccine looks pretty safe and is very immunogenic stimulating both arms of the immune system and is it t cells and antibodies absolutely yes so this vaccine technology is particularly designed to induce t cells some vaccines

Really only induce antibodies ours induces antibodies at good levels but also t cells measured in various t cell assays and that's becoming of increasing

Interest because we observe people who recover from covet disease and have very low antibody levels but some detectable t cells so it looks to many of us

As if in natural infection t cells are contributing to protection and therefore we'd like to uh mimic that by vaccination and that's exactly what we're seeing

With this particular vaccine so what are the next steps the next steps are to ramp up the numbers in our phase 3 trials we are using both a single dose and

Two doses of the vaccine that looks as if both give useful immune responses even though after two doses we see stronger immune responses and to keep

Following these individuals and to start trials elsewhere including very importantly in in the us hopefully in the next few weeks and give us a reason

to be optimistic you know assuming you guys and your great team are doing all this work and it continues at this pace you know what would be sort of a

Realistic I don't want you to get ahead of yourself Adrian I know we have a long way to go what would be a realistic estimate of you know reasonable

Distribution of a working vaccine we've always said that we're aiming to get this vaccine being administered being used by the end of this year and

Because of that unusually we've gone to scale at manufacturing with AstraZeneca with many partners very early on and AstraZeneca have now

Signed contracts for producing 2 billion doses of this vaccine over the next 12 months we won't have 2 billion doses by the end of the year but hopefully

We’ll have many millions and we'll be able to provide that for at-risk individuals by the end of the year that's still the target you