The UK’s Coronavirus Vaccine is safe and induces an immune reaction, according to preliminary results.
Results published today in the journal Lancet show that the early stage Oxford University trial has found that the vaccine is safe, causes few side effects, and induces strong immune responses in both parts of the immune system.
The trial of 1,077 healthy adults found that the vaccine induced strong antibody and T cell immune responses up to day 56 of the ongoing trial.
Explaining how the vaccine works, study lead author Professor Andrew Pollard, University of Oxford, UK, said;
“The new vaccine is a chimpanzee adenovirus viral vector (ChAdOx1) vaccine that expresses the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. It uses a common cold virus (adenovirus) that infects chimpanzees, which has been weakened so that it can’t cause any disease in humans, and is genetically modified to code for the spike protein of the human SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This means that when the adenovirus enters vaccinated people’s cells it also delivers the spike protein genetic code. This causes these people’s cells to produce the spike protein, and helps teach the immune system to recognise the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
The current results focus on the immune response measured in a laboratory, and scientists say further testing is needed to confirm whether the vaccine effectively protects against infection.
