What Astrazeneca and Irbm say after the stop of the anti Covid vaccine tests
All the latest news on the anti Covid vaccine from Astrazeneca, Oxford and Irbm
The Astrazeneca vaccine could arrive "by the end of this year". Word of Pascal Soriot, CEO of the company that will produce the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with Irbm, a company founded in Pomezia in 2009 and led by Piero Di Lorenzo.
The stop to the tests, imposed by an unexpected and serious adverse reaction in one of the volunteers who was given the vaccine , could not “frustrate” the project, according to Di Lorenzo.
Let's go step by step.
WHAT HAPPENED
Let's start with the facts. Astrazeneca, after an adverse reaction in a British volunteer, has suspended the worldwide testing of the vaccine developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Irbm, currently in clinical phase three.
THE REACTION
To be ill, after the administration of the vaccine (the connection to be verified) is a woman, as stated by the CEO of Astrazeneca Pascal Soriot.
The New York Times, writes Start Magazine, revealed that the volunteer was participating in the UK in 2/3 phases of the vaccine trial, but suddenly presented with transverse myelitis, an inflammation that affects the spinal cord and would often be triggered by viral infections.
VACCINE BY YEAR END?
Despite the stop of clinical trials, however, all is not lost. And the vaccine (also booked by the European Union) could still be available by the end of the year.
“Even so, I still think we are on track to have a set of data to present before the end of the year,” Pascal Soriot told the Guardian . "We may still have a vaccine by the end of this year, or early next year," depending on how fast the regulatory agency moves.
UNCERTAIN TIMES
However, the times are uncertain and it is not known when the trial "will be able to restart", said Soriot. The manager, however, stressed that the pauses in trials caused by "adverse events" are normal, but that "the difference here is that the whole world" is expecting an anti Covid vaccine soon.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW
What will happen now anyway? We have to wait for the investigations launched by an independent and third commission. If there is no correlation between vaccine and adverse reaction, the experimentation will be able to resume even in a week. If the vaccine caused the spinal problem in the volunteer woman then the stop could extend to six months.
ASTRAZENECA: TEST FERMI, PRODUCTION NO
Astrazeneca, in the meantime, has stopped clinical tests in new subjects, as usual, but has not stopped production. "Production does not stop and the monitoring of other volunteers continues", scattered throughout Great Britain (10 thousand), the United States (25 thousand) and Brazil (15 thousand), explained Piero Di Lorenzo of Irbm to Repubblica.
DI LORENZO: PROJECT NOT VANIFIED
Even Di Lorenzo, however, remains optimistic like Soriot: “We do not think that the case of an adverse effect can frustrate the project. It is part of the history of a vaccine candidate to run into accidents. If it had not been anti-Covid, the news would not have been spread precisely because it is not news, ”Di Lorenzo told Corriere della Sera. “ At this stage we are evaluating the quality of the doses released from the global plants destined for large-scale distribution on the day when the authorization arrives”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/cosa-dicono-astrazeneca-e-irbm-dopo-lo-stop-ai-test-del-vaccino-anti-covid/ on Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:05:37 +0000.