Another promising coronavirus vaccine just reached the final stage of clinical trials

[Chris Smith]

• Another potential coronavirus treatment is moving to the final stage of clinical trials, another vaccine candidate from China that can elicit the immune response desired to prevent an infection.
• With Phase 2 of a China National Biotec Group drug trial completed, the company is moving to the last stage ahead of potential regulatory approval.
• Phase 3 will be conducted in international markets because China’s COVID-19 caseload is too low for studying the effects of a potential vaccine.

Five vaccine candidates are now in the advanced phases of clinical trials in China, with a second one having just cleared Phase 2 trials. Sinovac announced a few days ago that 90% of volunteers who received the test drug developed the kind of antibodies that can neutralize the novel coronavirus. The company said the CoronaVac treatment has reached Phase 3, and that it's heading to Brazil to move forward to the final phase of testing.

China National Biotec Group (CNBG) also announced that one of its candidates has cleared Phase 2 with promising results, and it’s now looking at securing Phase 3 volunteers overseas for the final stage of the study. China may be experiencing a serious COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing right now, but the country doesn’t have enough sick people overall for Phase 3 trials to go forward locally. This phase can include anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands of people who receive the vaccine candidate. But if the volunteers can’t be reliably exposed to the virus, researchers won’t be able to measure the efficacy of the vaccine candidate. Oxford researchers faced the same problem for their candidate.

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Another promising coronavirus vaccine just reached the final stage of clinical trials originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 09:54:47 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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