AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Promising Response

AstraZeneca’s (AZN) cornoavirus vaccine showed promising immune response in the more than 1,000 patients involved in the phase 1 and phase 2 trials.

AstraZeneca is developing a cornoavirus vaccine by the name AZD1222, in partnership with the University of Oxford.

The phase I trial data of AZD1222 was published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday. The trial demonstrated that the vaccine candidate produced antibodies and immune T-cell in participants.

“The phase 1/2 Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trial is now published. The vaccine is safe, well-tolerated, and immunogenic. Congratulations to Pedro Folegatti and colleagues. These results are extremely encouraging,” Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, tweeted.

“A single dose elicited both humoral and cellular responses against SARS-CoV-2, with a booster immunization augmenting neutralizing antibody titers,” the report says.

Neutralising antibodies were generated in more than 90% of participants across different assays.

The researches said that adverse events such as fatigue, headache, and local tenderness occurred commonly in COVID-19 vaccinees, but were tolerable and mostly ameliorated by paracetamol.

Nearly 200 vaccine candidates are in various stages of development across the world. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is among the leading vaccine candidates. AstraZeneca has said it may begin delivering doses to the U.K. as early as September. The pandemic has claimed more than 600,000 lives, worldwide.

“The interim Phase I/II data for our coronavirus vaccine shows that the vaccine did not lead to any unexpected reactions and had a similar safety profile to previous vaccines of this type,” said Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial at Oxford University and co-author of the trial. “The immune responses observed following vaccination are in line with what we expect will be associated with protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, although we must continue with our rigorous clinical trial programme to confirm this.”

“We saw the strongest immune response in participants who received two doses of the vaccine, indicating that this might be a good strategy for vaccination,’ he added.

Meanwhile, BioNTech (BNTX) and Pfizer Inc. (PFE), which are also developing a COVID-19 vaccine, said earlier on Monday that their vaccine candidate produced a T-cell response in participants in an early-stage trial in Germany.

AZN is currently trading at $61.29, up $0.19 or 0.32%, on the NYSE.

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