By Kate Kelland
LONDON, April 17 (Reuters) - A million doses of a potential
COVID-19 vaccine being developed by British scientists are
already being manufactured and will be available by September,
even before trials prove whether the shot is effective, the team
said on Friday.
The Oxford University team's experimental product, called
"ChAdOx1 nCoV-19", is a type known as a recombinant viral vector
vaccine and is one of at least 70 potential COVID-19 candidate
shots under development by biotech and research teams around the
world.
At least five of those are in preliminary testing in people.
The Oxford scientists said on Friday they were recruiting
volunteers for early stage - Phase 1 - human trials of their
shot, and large-scale production capacity was being put in place
"at risk". This means the shots will be produced in large
numbers at risk of being useless if trials show they do not
work.
"We have started at risk manufacturing of this vaccine not
just on a smallish scale ... but with a network of manufacturers
in as many as seven different places around the world," Adrian
Hill, a professor and director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford
University, told reporters in an online briefing.
"The aim is to have at least a million doses by around about
September, when we also hope to have efficacy (trial) results."
He said three of the manufacturing partners were in Britain,
two in Europe, one in India and one in China.
The scientists said initial manufacturing costs would be in
"tens of millions" of pounds and acknowledged the investment
risk of pressing ahead with production before verification.
They did not give details of their financing.
More than 2.14 million people have been reported to be
infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 143,744 have
died, according to a Reuters tally.
Hill's team said they plan to start safety and then
mid-stage efficacy trials of their potential COVID-19 vaccine in
adults aged between 18 and 55 within weeks.
They then plan to expand the trial group to older age groups
later, and hope to run a final phase trial with around 5,000
volunteers in the late summer.
Hill and his co-researchers - including Sarah Gilbert, an
Oxford professor of vaccinology - said they have "a high degree
of confidence" that human trials of the ChAdOx1 shot will show
positive results in protecting against COVID-19 infection.
They acknowledged that many other research teams worldwide
were also working on potential vaccines, with only a proportion
likely to be fully successful.
"We can never be certain these things are going to work,"
Gilbert told the briefing. "My view is that I think this one has
a very strong chance of working."
Asked when the shot - if proven to work - might be able to
be made widely available to the public, Hill said the best case
scenario would be for regulators to grant it "emergency use
approval" - something that could be achieved within six weeks
beyond the point at which data show whether it is effective.
That, he said, could mean around six weeks from September,
when the team hopes to have positive trial data.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland;
Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)