Last checked at 
* Oxford trial results due this year - Pollard says
* "We are getting closer but not there yet" - Pollard
* Vaccine would be a "game changer" - Pollard
* UK expects Oxford and Pfizer data in early December
(Adds UK vaccine taskforce chief, PM Johnson)
By Alistair Smout and Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The University of Oxford hopes to
present late-stage trial results on its COVID-19 vaccine
candidate this year, raising hopes that Britain could start to
roll out a successful vaccine in late December or early 2021.
A vaccine that works is seen as a game-changer in the battle
against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.2 million
people worldwide, shuttered swathes of the global economy and
turned normal life upside down for billions of people.
"I'm optimistic that we could reach that point before the
end of this year," Oxford Vaccine Trial Chief Investigator
Andrew Pollard told British lawmakers of presenting trial
results this year.
Pollard said working out whether or not the vaccine worked
would likely come this year, after which the data would have to
be carefully reviewed by regulators and then a political
decision made on who should get the vaccine.
"Our bit - we are getting closer to but we are not there
yet," Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said.
Asked if he expected the vaccine would start to be deployed
before Christmas, he said: "There is a small chance of that
being possible but I just don't know."
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one
of the first from big pharma to be submitted for regulatory
approval, along with Pfizer and BioNTech's
candidate.
"If I put on my rose-tinted specs, I would hope that we will
see positive interim data from both Oxford and from
Pfizer/BioNTech in early December and if we get that then I
think we have got the possibility of deploying by the year end,"
Kate Bingham, the chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, told
lawmakers.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there was the prospect of
a vaccine in the first quarter of 2021.
"GAME CHANGER"
Work began on the Oxford vaccine in January. Called AZD1222,
or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, the viral vector vaccine is made from a
weakened version of a common cold virus that causes infections
in chimpanzees.
The chimpanzee cold virus has been genetically changed to
include the genetic sequence of the so-called spike protein
which the coronavirus uses to gain entry to human cells. The
hope is that the human body will then attack the novel
coronavirus if it sees it again.
If Oxford's vaccine works, it would eventually allow the
world to return to some measure of normality after the tumult of
the pandemic.
Asked what success looked like, he said: "I think good is
having vaccines that have significant efficacy - so whether, I
mean, that is 50, 60, 70, 80 percent, whatever the figure is -
is an enormous achievement.
"It means from a health system point of view, there are
fewer people with COVID going into hospital, that people who
develop cancer can have their operations of chemotherapy - its a
complete game changer and a success if we meet those efficacy
end points."
But Pollard, one of the world's top experts on immunology,
said the world might not return to normal immediately.
"...It takes time to roll out vaccines. Not everyone will
take them," he said. "We will still have people getting this
virus because it is just too good at transmitting."
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by
Nick Macfie)
