ISLAMABAD – As the deadly coronavirus is gripping the world at a fast pace,the scientists have decided against testing the vaccine on animals and willproceed with the human trials of it within days, shunning a routinepractice.
“I don’t think proving this in an animal model is on the critical path togetting this to a clinical trial,” said Tal Zaks, chief medical officer atModerna, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech that has produced a Covid-19vaccine candidate at record speed.
He told STAT that scientists at the National Institutes of Health are“working on nonclinical research in parallel.” Meanwhile, the clinicaltrial started recruiting healthy participantslinkinthe first week of March.
That isn’t how vaccine testing normally happens. Regulators require that amanufacturer show a product is safe before it goes into people, and whileit isn’t enshrined in law, researchers almost always check that a newconcoction is effective in lab animals before putting human volunteers atpotential risk.
Meanwhile, the development came as scientists in Britain said a vaccinecould be tested on humans by June after encouraging results on mice.
Scientists from Imperial College London said that clinical trials couldtake place in a few months’ time if they receive funding, after trials onmice gave promising results.
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“Currently we have a prototype vaccine in animal models where the earlyresults are encouraging,” Dr Robin Shattock told a British media outlet.
“We are hoping to progress to clinical testing by the summer depending onobtaining sufficient funds for the next stage,” said the head of mucosalinfection and immunitylinkatthe Department of Infectious Disease.
A number of researchers across the globe are working to develop a vaccinefor the Covid-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 145,000 peopleacross the globe.
