University of Maryland injects coronavirus vaccine in first volunteers, aiming for approvals in fall
MAY 05, 2020
Medical staff at the University of Maryland School of Medicine spent early Monday injecting the first few people with a potential vaccine for the coronavirus as part of an accelerated international effort to have a vaccine ready to begin use in some people as early as this fall.
The trial at the university’s Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health and three other sites in the United States and Germany is for four separate but similar vaccines developed by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and the German biotech company BioNTech. Pfizer planned to announce the U.S. trials Tuesday morning.
“We’re not skipping any steps, but we are speeding them up quite a bit,” said Dr. Kirsten Lyke, an infectious disease expert and the study’s lead investigator in Baltimore. “This vaccine is actually four different vaccines, with testing moving rapidly, head-to-head. ... We’re hoping one rises to the top.”
Lyke, a professor of medicine and faculty member at the university’s vaccine development center, said she and other researchers learned a lot from work on quick-moving threats such as the Ebola virus about how to expedite the vaccine trial process.
The four vaccines tested at Maryland and the other sites, with Pfizer funding, are variations of the same type of vaccine. The mRNA, or messenger RNA, vaccine works by conveying genetic instructions to a person’s cells to make a specific protein that can induce production of antibodies that would fight the real virus if someone came in contact with it.
It differs from traditional vaccines because it does not inject a virus protein into the body. An mRNA vaccine has been tested but never approved. It’s shown promise for infectious diseases and some kinds of cancer.
Five people were injected Monday and 360 will be injected with one of the vaccines or a placebo in total in the first phase, which is expected to end in June. If any of the vaccines are shown to be safe and effective, they will continue in the process. The trial eventually will expand to 840 people, with results expected by fall.
The first people injected are healthy people as young as age 18, followed by older people up to age 85 and then people with health problems such as diabetes or high blood pressure that put them at risk for complications from COVID-19. They will each get two shots a month apart.
A veteran of vaccine trials, Lyke said she’s never done one quite this way or this quickly but said it should offer hope to the public that the scientific community is working as fast as possible. Absent a vaccine, distancing requirements are unlikely to fully ease.
