By Mick Krever and Phil Black, CNN
London (CNN) The UK government has signed a contract for the first human challenge studies for the novel coronavirus, in which healthy volunteers are deliberately infected with the virus in a controlled setting, and some receive an experimental vaccine.
Up to 19 volunteers at a time will take part in the tests, to be held at the Royal Free Hospital in London, which houses a Biosafety Level 3 ward. They will be run by hVIVO, a medical research company that specializes in running challenge trials, in partnership with Imperial College London.
These clinical trials will be a little different from most.
For the current Covid-19 vaccine candidates that are in Phase 3 — the final stage of testing — tens of thousands of volunteers are given an experimental vaccine and then released to live their everyday lives; researchers assume that a certain percentage of them will be exposed to the virus naturally.
In a challenge trial, by contrast, participants are deliberately dosed with virus.
Proponents of challenge trials say that they are more efficient, requiring far fewer volunteers — likely in the hundreds — because researchers know for certain that everyone will be exposed to the virus, and that they can deliver scientific data more quickly.
Categories: Vaccine
British scientists on Tuesday announced plans to launch the first COVID-19 human challenge trials in which researchers will intentionally infect a sample of healthy volunteers with the virus in order to speed up the testing of potential vaccines.
According to The Washington Post, the research, scheduled to begin in January, will be led by scientists at Imperial College London and funded by the British government.
Fewer than 100 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 will have a laboratory-grown strain of COVID-19 blown into their noses and will be quarantined in a private unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, where they will undergo regular testing over a two- to three-week period.
According to the Post, the study aims to determine the minimal amount of virus necessary to cause an active infection in the volunteers’ upper respiratory system.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/britain-to-infect-healthy-individuals-with-coronavirus-for-vaccine-trials/ar-BB1admbE?ocid=spartan-ntp-feeds