Initial human trial results for a promising COVID-19 vaccine have been been published in the journal The Lancet. The vaccine, developed at Oxford University, has so far been found to be safe and induce the two key immune responses needed to protect against coronavirus infection.
The Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, recently renamed from ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 to AZD1222, was developed incredibly rapidly, with Phase 1/2 human trials starting in April. The newly published preliminary data reports the results of a blind, randomized controlled trial testing the safety and immunogenicity of the experimental vaccine in 1,000 subjects.
The cohort blindly received either AZD1222 or a meningococcal vaccine as control. The initial phases of human testing in a vaccine trial are designed to investigate how safe the new vaccine is and whether it triggers biomarkers associated with an effective immune response.
