Last checked at 
* Trial to start by the end of the year - Russia's RDIF
* Boost for Russian vaccine, which has been criticised in
West
* Once COVID-19 vaccine frontrunner, AstraZeneca has slipped
back
(Adding details throughout)
By Andrew Osborn and Pushkala Aripaka
Dec 11 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca will start clinical trials to
test a combination of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with
Russia's Sputnik V shot aimed at boosting the efficacy of the
British drugmaker's vaccine, Russia's sovereign wealth fund said
on Friday.
Trials will start by the end of the year, said the RDIF
wealth fund, which has funded Sputnik V, named after the
Soviet-era satellite that triggered the space race.
In a statement on Friday, AstraZeneca said it was
considering how it could assess combinations of different
vaccines, and would soon begin exploring with Russia's Gamaleya
Institute, which developed Sputnik V, whether two common cold
virus-based vaccines could be successfully combined.
It did not give further details.
The co-operation between one of Britain's most valuable
listed companies and the state-backed Russian science research
institute highlights the pressure to develop an effective shot
to fight the pandemic that has killed over 1.5 million people.
The move is likely to be seen in Moscow as a long-awaited
vote of confidence by a Western manufacturer in Sputnik V.
Its Russian developers say clinical trials, still underway,
have shown it has an efficacy rate of over 90%, higher than
AstraZeneca's own vaccine and similar to U.S. rivals Pfizer
and Moderna.
Some Western scientists have raised concerns about the speed
at which Russia has worked, giving the regulatory go-ahead for
its vaccines and launching large-scale vaccinations with Sputnik
V before full trials to test its safety and efficacy have been
completed.
The prospective tie-up comes as AstraZeneca, once seen as a
frontrunner in the vaccine race, prepares for further tests to
confirm whether its shot could be 90% effective, potentially
slowing its rollout.
The average efficacy rate was 70.4% in interim late-stage
data.
Both projects are using harmless adenoviruses as vehicles to
bring genetic instructions into the body to prompt cells to
produce vaccine proteins, an approach that has previously been
used in an Ebola vaccine.
The developers of Sputnik V suggested on Twitter last month
that AstraZeneca try the combination.
"The decision by AstraZeneca to carry out clinical trials
using one of two vectors of Sputnik V in order to increase its
own vaccine’s efficacy is an important step towards uniting
efforts in the fight against the pandemic," said RDIF head
Kirill Dmitriev in a statement.
The partnership may draw scrutiny after Britain said in July
hackers backed by the Russian state were trying to steal
COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and
pharmaceutical institutions around the world. The Kremlin
rejected the Western allegations.
The news came as Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline
said clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine showed an
insufficient immune response in older people.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Andrew Osborn
in Moscow; Additional reporting by Ludwig Burger
Writing by Josephine Mason;
editing by Patrick Graham and Mark Potter)
