Jenner Institute and Astra Zeneca at the Forefront in the Race for COVID-19 Vaccine

The Oxford University's Jenner Institute forged a partnership with Astra Zeneca for the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine that the Jenner Institute is developing.

Oxford University's Jenner Institute appears to be one of the groups worldwide ahead in the race in developing a vaccine against COVID-19. The institute is not a commercial biopharma, but their focus is vaccine development, and last year, they tested a vaccine against an earlier coronavirus. They have proved and shown that their trials during the previous year were not harmful to humans.

Recent development

Due to this head start, they are expecting to launch a clinical trial of the vaccine to more than 6,000 people by late May 2020 to show that their vaccine against COVID-19 is safe and also effective.

Phase I clinical trials are directed towards exhibiting the safety of vaccines, while Phase II and III are implemented to show that the vaccines are effective. The Oxford University researchers believe that if they receive emergency approval, and the vaccine is proven to be effective, they think that they could have a few million doses available by September.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana have vaccinated six rhesus macaque monkeys with single doses of Jenner Institute's vaccine. The monkeys were then exposed to large quantities of SARS-CoV-2 or the virus that is causing COVID-19. This exposure had continuously made the other lab monkeys ill. However, more than 28 days later, six of the macaque monkeys were healthy.

Vincent Munster, the scientist who conducted the research, said that the rhesus macaque is the closest thing that the researchers have to humans. He also expressed that the scientists are still analyzing the result. He is hoping to share the results with other researchers next week and then submit it to a peer-reviewed journal.

Immunity in monkeys, however, is not an absolute assurance that the vaccine will be equally effective on humans, and provide the same degree of protection. SinoVac, a Chinese company that also started a clinical trial, said that their vaccine was also effective in rhesus macaques. With all the efforts to find a new vaccine, these monkey results are the most recent indication that Oxford's venture is at the forefront.

Oxford's Jenner Institute is ahead of the game because Adrian Hill, the institute's director, has spent most of his career developing a malaria vaccine. Also, the Jenner Institute is one of the most significant academic centers focused on nonprofit vaccine research. The institute also has its model manufacturing plant that can make a batch of up to 1,000 doses. Since 2014, they have already developed a template for mass-producing the coronavirus vaccine, if proven effective, and could produce a million doses.

Once the pandemic hit, Hill has pivoted the institute's resources and human resources and focused on COVID-19. His colleague, Sarah Gilbert, has been conducting work on another coronavirus, the MERS-CoV. Once the scale of COVID-19 became pervasive, grant money started arriving.

Their vaccine changes the genome of a familiar virus to neutralize any of the effects of the disease, and then force it to mimic the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Once inoculated, the impostor stimulates the immune system to fight and kill the virus.