Potential Vaccine For The Coronavirus Has Been Sent For Human Trials

The world is facing a crisis right now with the coronavirus outbreak. This is because at the moment, there is no known cure for it, but there is some good news. Moderna, a biotech company, has recently announced that they have formulated a potential vaccine for the coronavirus and that it is now ready for human testing.

Vials of the vaccine have since been sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases where it will be used in Phase 1 of the study in the US. They are anticipating that the first clinical trials will begin near late April where 25 volunteers will be participating in the tests, with the results expected in July or August.

According to Moderna, “mRNA-1273 is an mRNA vaccine against the novel coronavirus encoding for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike (S) protein, which was designed by Moderna in collaboration with NIAID. The S protein complex is necessary for membrane fusion and host cell infection and has been the target of vaccines against the coronaviruses responsible for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).”

That being said, this does not mean that the vaccines are ready for public consumption just yet as trials will need to be conducted to test its viability. However, it is still good news because at least it would indicate that we are progressing towards something.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Medical
Tags: Coronavirus, covid-19, Health