A candidate vaccine against COVID-19 from the US biotech firm Moderna showed signs that it can produce antibody that prevented the proliferation of the coronavirus, in the government-sponsored safety testing. The biotech firm has claimed that the drug's (mRNA-1273) test results have "promising results, "raising hopes in the global effort to develop a vaccine or drug.
“This is a very good sign that we make an antibody that can stop the virus from replicating,” Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel said in an interview to Bloomberg. The data “couldn’t have been better,” he said.
Having successfully completed phase 1, Moderna is going ahead with wider testing of its experimental drug. According to the company, the phase 1 trial was primarily designed to study about the safety of the shot and there have been no major signs of warning. On February 24, Moderna shipped the first clinical batch to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of National Institutes of Health (NIH), for use in their phase 1 clinical study with eight people.
Moderna has been consistently working towards a vaccine as soon as the Chinese authorities shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus on January 11. With this completion phase I, Moderna is now leading the many groups working to respond to this continuing global health emergency created by Sars-CoV-2.
The drug company has announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed its review of the company’s investigational new drug application application for mRNA-1273 allowing it to proceed to phase 2 study of its effectiveness, expected to begin shortly. In the phase 2 trial, 600 patients will be undergoing the test. The manufacture of the mRNA-1273 material for the phase 2 trial is underway.
Moderna is finalising protocol for phase 3 study of mRNA-1273, expected to begin in early summer of 2020. Phase 3 testing will be done with many thousands of people who have been hit with Sars-CoV-2.
