A vaccine in development by the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is based on a chimpanzee adenovirus called ChAdOx1. Their Phase 1/2 trial revealed that the vaccine was safe, causing no severe side effects. It raised antibodies against the coronavirus as well as other immune defenses.

The ChAdOx1 vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, is testing the vaccine in phase 3 clinical trials with more than 10,000 people from across the UK, including children and the elderly.

The Oxford COVID-19 vaccine team is led by Prof Sarah Gilbert, Prof Andrew Pollard, Prof Teresa Lambe, Dr Sandy Douglas, Prof Catherine Green and Prof Adrian Hill. Their team includes scientists from both the Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group, who bring together decades of internationally recognised experience in vaccine research, including responding to the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

The teams had already used ChAdOx1 vaccine technology to produce candidate vaccines against a number of pathogens including flu, Zika and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another coronavirus.

PHASE 2 PHASE 3 COMBINED PHASES

The vaccine is now in Phase 2/3 trials in England and India, as well as Phase 3 trials in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States.

In August the European Union reached an agreement for AstraZeneca to deliver 400 million doses if the trials yield positive results.

AstraZeneca has indicated they might be able to start delivering emergency vaccines as early as October, 2020 depending on the outcome of the studies.

The company has said their total manufacturing capacity for the vaccine, if approved, stands at two billion doses. India’s Serum Institute has already produced millions of doses to be used in trials.

Source:

https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/Article/2020-07-19-the-oxford-covid-19-vaccine