WASHINGTON - In the worldwide race for a vaccine to stop the coronavirus, the laboratory sprinting fastest is at Oxford University.
The animals were then exposed to heavy quantities of the virus that is causing the pandemic - exposure that had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab. But more than 28 days later all six were healthy, said Vincent Munster, the researcher who conducted the test. Which potential vaccine will emerge from the scramble as the most successful is impossible to know until clinical trial data becomes available.
All of the others will face the same challenges, including obtaining millions of dollars in funding, persuading regulators to approve human tests, demonstrating a vaccine's safety and - after all of that - proving its effectiveness in protecting people from the coronavirus. If social distancing measures or other factors continue to slow the rate of new infections in Britain, he said, the trial might not be able to show that the vaccine makes a difference: Participants who received a placebo might not be infected any more frequently than those who have been given the vaccine. The scientists would have to try again elsewhere, a dilemma that every other vaccine effort will face as well.
A longtime colleague, professor Sarah Gilbert, 58, modified the same chimpanzee virus to make a vaccine against an earlier coronavirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome. After a clinical trial in Britain demonstrated its safety, another test began in December in Saudi Arabia, where outbreaks of the deadly disease are still common.
Donors are currently spending tens of millions of dollars to start the manufacturing process at facilities in Britain and the Netherlands even before the vaccine is proven to work, said Sandy Douglas, 37, a doctor at Oxford overseeing vaccine production.But the team has not yet reached an agreement with a North American manufacturer, in part because the major pharmaceutical companies there typically demand exclusive worldwide rights before investing in a potential medicine.