A COVID-19 vaccine developed by a German firm BioNTech in collaboration with the US Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has shown potential in the early stages of human trial.
The drug is one of the frontline 17 COVID-19 vaccines that are in a race to find the vaccine for the global pandemic that has affected more than 10.5 million people and has killed more than half a million people. The company, On Wednesday, issued a statement where they said that drug was found to be well tolerated in the early stage of human trials.
This becomes one of the four COVID-19 vaccines that have shown potential in the human testing level. The others include Moderna, CanSino Biologics, and Inovio Pharmaceuticals. The depository receipts of the Frankfurt-based BioNTech became their highest since March 2019 after the news of the Vaccine trials were out. Pfizer’s stock too rose by 6 percent.
BioNTech has reportedly tested tow dosages of its BNT162b1 drug on 24 healthy volunteers who showed higher levels of COVID-19 antibodies after 28 days than it is normally seen in infected people. The Chief Executive Officer of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin said,
“These first trial results show that the vaccine yields immune activity and causes a strong immune response.”
A Bigger Trial Soon
The early-stage of human trials of vaccines is to measure the number of certain antibodies and other immune boosters in the blood which becomes an indicator of the readiness of the body to fight a certain disease. The pharmaceutical industry is gearing up for the next round of trials where they would like to see how the drug reacts in real infections for a longer period of time.
Reportedly, BioNTech and Pfizer will now pick the promising of the four experimental vaccines for a trial which will involve up to 30,000 healthy participants. The trial is likely to begin in the United States and Europe in the latter half of July, only if it is greenlit. If everything goes according to the plan, the companies are looking to produce 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and close to 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021 in Germany and United States.
Source: News18
