A BRADFORD doctor says volunteers could be exposed to the new coronavirus in controlled settings from January in a bid to speed up vaccine development.
Dr Amir Khan has explained how the Government is backing so-called human challenge studies, whereby a small number of participants who have received a vaccine will be purposefully exposed to Covid-19 to assess the vaccine's efficacy.
It is hoped these studies will help speed up vaccine development.
In the trials, a small number of young and healthy participants - aged 18 to 30 - will be given a vaccine candidate, which has previously been assessed in earlier clinical trials.
This group of up to 90 participants will then be exposed to the virus in a controlled environment.
They will be carefully monitored to assess how the vaccine works and any possible side-effects.
Officials said that human challenge trials offer the chance to speed up vaccine development.
It is hoped the trials will start in January, with results expected by May 2021, pending approval from regulatory bodies and ethics committees.
Appearing on today’s Good Morning Britain, Dr Khan said: “It’s fascinating from a medical point of view.
They will be monitoring people very carefully. It will be very controlled
“It’s marred with all sorts of ethical issues.”
“It still has to go to the ethics committee still and they hope to get it up and running by January.”
A trial taking place at Oxford Uni is calling for healthy volunteers in the vaccine trial to be infected with Covid-19.@DrAmirKhanGP explains how the trial will work and the measures being taken to ensure the safety of the volunteers.
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) October 21, 2020
Watch GMB 👉 https://t.co/yyUUJmzswF pic.twitter.com/eWmRFwjs1k
The Government announced that it is investing £33.6 million to back the studies in partnership with Imperial College London, hVIVO and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
The aim of the research will initially be to discover the smallest amount of virus it takes to cause Covid-19 infection in small groups of healthy young people, who are at lowest risk of harm.
The studies will be carried out under strict conditions at the Royal Free Hospital in London and will feature healthy young adults, carefully selected by researchers, who will be compensated for their involvement.
After the initial study, the volunteers will be tracked for a year.
Lead researcher on the human challenge study Dr Chris Chiu, from Imperial College London, said: "Our number one priority is the safety of the volunteers. No study is completely risk-free, but the Human Challenge Programme partners will be working hard to ensure we make the risks as low as we possibly can.
"The UK's experience and expertise in human challenge trials, as well as in wider Covid-19 science, will help us tackle the pandemic, benefiting people in the UK and worldwide."
Kate Bingham, chairwoman of the Government's Vaccine Taskforce, said: "This research will improve understanding of the virus, the biology of the disease, the signs that a person is protected from infection or developing the disease, the vaccine candidates, and will help in making decisions about research, that it is carried out safely and based on up-to-date evidence.
"There is much we can learn in terms of immunity, the length of vaccine protection, and reinfection."
England's deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said: "First, for the many vaccines still in the mid-stages of development, human challenge studies may help pick out the most promising ones to take forward into larger phase three trials.
"Second, for vaccines which are in the late stages of development and already proven to be safe and effective through phase three studies, human challenge studies could help us further understand if the vaccines prevent transmission as well as preventing illness."
The news comes after the Government's chief scientific adviser said it is "unlikely" that a coronavirus vaccine will stop the disease completely.
Sir Patrick Vallance said that only one disease - smallpox - had ever been completely eradicated.
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