The UK government on Tuesday said that the human trials of a potential vaccine developed at the Oxford University will begin from Thursday.
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the government will provide 20 million pounds to the Oxford research team to help fund their clinical trials, with a further 22.5 million pounds for researchers at Imperial College London.
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“The first human trials for vaccines begin in the UK on Thursday. We’re giving the 2 leading UK vaccine teams at Oxford & Imperial all the support they need to make it happen,” Hancock also said in a tweet.
The potential vaccine is an adenovirus vaccine vector (ChAdOx1) and was developed at Oxford’s Jenner Institute, the university had said in a statement earlier.
“It was chosen as the most suitable vaccine technology for a SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccine as it can generate a strong immune response from one dose and it is not a replicating virus, so it cannot cause an ongoing infection in the vaccinated individual,” it added.
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The university also stated that the potential vaccine is safer to give to children, the elderly and anyone with a pre-existing condition such as diabetes.
“Adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type, having been used safely in thousands of subjects, from 1 week to 90 years of age, in vaccines targeting over 10 different diseases,” it added.