Coronavirus vaccine trial underway at NYU Langone
NEW YORK - The search for a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 just got closer to home. The NYU Langone Vaccine Center started the first clinical trial of possible antidotes in the United States.
Dr. Mark Mulligan, the director of the Vaccine Center, and his team are now in Stage 1 of a double-blind study, which involves injecting participants between 18 and 55 years old with either a vaccine or the placebo.
"I'm not sure it's sunk in all the way yet but we do recognize that this is of great interest and importance," Mulligan said.
He said the most important question in the early stages is always: Is it safe? He said that healthy people are administered the vaccine candidates so they have to be very safe. And finding willing test subjects in New York hasn't at all been a problem.
"We've had an amazing response and had many, many people stepping forward," Mulligan said. "It's very evident that New Yorkers want to fight back."
The testing is part of a three-stage global vaccine research program from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
"We've accelerated what takes years into months, months into weeks and weeks into a matter of days in order to rapidly enter the clinic and face this public health challenge head-on to try to help patients in dire need," Pfizer said in a statement to FOX 5 NY.
Mulligan said the trial will likely last until early 2021 with more than 8,000 participants. He said he hopes it will yield the results that a hopeful world longs for.
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Excerpt from NYU Grossman School of Medicine Announcement
In the study, candidate vaccine injections will deliver small segments of mRNA into the arm muscles of participants. All mRNA versions are encased in a fatty lipid particle meant to prevent their destruction by enzymes, and to let them persist long enough to enter the cytoplasm of cells in muscle and nearby lymph nodes. Once there, the spike or RBD protein is made and triggers antibody and cellular immune responses.
"We are excited to work with industry leaders to rapidly, carefully test state-of-the art vaccine candidates, with goal of providing protection against this pandemic that has taken such a tremendous toll," says Mark J. Mulligan, MD, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology and director of the Vaccine Center at NYU Langone Health. "Vaccines have always been our most effective weapons to protect the health of the public from infectious disease threats, which is why it's so important to study these candidates closely."