CanSino Biologics’ COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Promise in Humans

A leading COVID-19 vaccine candidate has shown promise as being safe and effective in humans and produced an immune response against the coronavirus, according to preliminary data from a phase 1 trial of 108 healthy adults in China.

The trial results of China-based CanSino Biologics’ vaccine candidate Ad5-nCoV will be evaluated in six months. The company will advance the vaccine to a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial in Wuhan, China, to see if the results can be repeated and if any adverse events occur up to six months after vaccination. That trial will test the vaccine in 500 healthy adults, including patients over 60 years old.

At all dosing strengths, the vaccine was well-tolerated and elicited immune responses in the phase 1 trial, the researchers said.

“Importantly, the Ad5-nCoV vaccine … stimulated a rapid T-cell response in the majority of volunteers, which was greater in those given the higher and middle doses of vaccine, with levels peaking at 14 days after vaccination,” the researchers said.

Wei Chen, the study’s leader and a professor from the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, said that while the preliminary results are important, they “should be interpreted cautiously.”

CanSino is working on another COVID-19 vaccine in a partnership with Vancouver, Canada’s Precision NanoSystems, that will use RNA lipid nanoparticles. — James Miessler