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A COVID-19 vaccine developed by US-based Moderna Inc. has shown promise in early results. The vaccine, co-developed with the US' main agency for research on infectious diseases, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), has actually been one of the frontrunners in global scientists' race to bring an effective vaccine to market for some time now.
On 14 July, the makers of this vaccine, mRNA-1273, an investigational vaccine against COVID 19, published the interim findings of the phase 1 trials in The New England Journal of Medicine: early findings show that the vaccine, designed to protect against SARS-COV-2, prompted neutralising antibody activity in healthy adults.
The RNA based vaccine is being co-developed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and American Biotech giant Moderna, Inc.
The trial was led by Dr Lisa A. Jackson of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, where the first participant received the vaccine on 16 March 2020. In April, the trial was expanded to enrol adults older than age 55 years; it now has 120 participants.
However, the newly published results cover the 18- to 55-year age group only.
The study found that all the volunteers showed antibodies after receiving the first dose of the vaccine. The higher the dosage, the stronger the immune response.
No severe side effects of the vaccine have been reported yet. More than half of the participants reported fatigue, headache, chills, myalgia or muscle pain at the injection site. However, systemic adverse events were more common following the second vaccination and in those who received the highest vaccine dose.
This report also contains details of the initial findings from the first 45 participants, aged 18 to 55 years, who were enrolled at the study sites in Seattle and at Emory University in Atlanta. Three groups of 15 participants received two intramuscular injections, 28 days apart, of either 25, 100 or 250 micrograms (mcg) of the investigational vaccine. All the participants received one injection; 42 received both scheduled injections.
The COVID-19 pandemic has now touched 13.3 million cases worldwide and the development of a vaccine would be pivotal in tracing where the next few months will take us. Moderna has specified that plans are underway to launch a Phase 3 efficacy trial in July 2020.
