Not fake News. What say you? Who's ready to volunteer? UK taps Open Orphan to explore vaccine trials that infect volunteers with coronavirus.
hVIVO will oversee the manufacture of the challenge virus and the completion of the first-in-human characterisation study. The characterisation study enables identification of the smallest dose of the challenge virus it takes to cause a person to develop COVID-19, which will be used for future human challenge studies.
Once the characterisation study is approved by regulators, we hope to commence the study in January 2021. COVID-19 human challenge studies evaluating vaccines may commence by May 2021, subject to regulatory approval. The study’s sponsor is Imperial College London and it will be conducted by hVIVO at The Royal Free Hospital’s specialist unit in London.
For the simple man. In plain English, Healthy, young people in the U.K. may soon be asked to volunteer to get deliberately exposed to Covid-19 as part of a set of human challenge studies, which aim to speed up the process of vaccine development.
