Results from an early trial of a coronavirus vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech indicate that the candidate could be safe and effective.
The mRNA vaccine, dubbed BNT162b1, was tested on 24 healthy participants and was proven to produce coronavirus antibodies at a higher level than those who have been infected. The companies tested several dosage amounts — the second highest triggered a short fever in 75 percent of the participants after the second injection. The third highest dosage tested was discontinued after reports of injection site pain.
There are over 130 coronavirus vaccines in development, but the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate is just one of 17 currently being studied on humans, and is now the fourth to show promising results in an early stage trial. If given the go-ahead, the companies are planning to launch a large-scale trial involving up to 30,000 participants by the end of this month. If ultimately approved, the companies reported that they can manufacture 100 million doses of a vaccine by the end of this year and another 1.2 billion doses next year.
BioNTech is also trialing three other coronavirus candidates, but has yet to report results from those studies.
Read the full Reuters report.