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(Adds shares, Moderna context)
LONDON, July 15 (Reuters) - Positive news on initial trials
of the University of Oxford's potential COVID-19 vaccine that
has been licensed to AstraZeneca could be announced as
soon as Thursday, ITV's political editor Robert Peston said,
citing a source.
The potential vaccine is already in large-scale Phase III
human trials to assess whether it can protect against COVID-19,
but its developers have yet to report Phase I results which
would show whether it is safe and whether or not it induces an
immune response.
The developers of the vaccine said this month they were
encouraged by the immune response they had seen in trials so far
and were expecting to publish Phase 1 data by the end of July.
The data are expected to be published by The Lancet medical
journal.
More than 100 vaccines are being developed and tested
around the world to try to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, which has
killed hundreds of thousands and ravaged the global economy.
AstraZeneca's experimental vaccine is probably the world's
leading candidate and most advanced in terms of development, the
World Health Organization's chief scientist said in June.
The company has signed agreements with governments around
the globe to supply the vaccine should it be cleared for use.
Shares in AstraZeneca traded 5% higher by 1415 GMT. There
was no immediate comment from the company on the report.
A spokeswoman for Oxford University told Reuters the team
was awaiting confirmation from a scientific journal of a
publication date and time for the data, but gave no further
details. "(We) are not able to confirm when it will be
released," she said.
Peston said in a blog post: "I am hearing there will be
positive news soon (perhaps tomorrow) on initial trials of the
Oxford COVID-19 vaccine that is backed by AstraZeneca."
Researchers in the United States reported on Tuesday that
Moderna Inc's experimental vaccine showed it was safe
and provoked immune responses in all 45 healthy volunteers in an
ongoing early-stage study.
Moderna started its Phase II trial in May and expects to
start a Phase III trial on July 27.
(Reporting by William Schomberg and Kate Kelland; Writing by
Alistair Smout; Editing by Keith Weir and Edmund Blair)
