Around 300 Volunteers have begun being immunised with a new UK coronavirus vaccine, as part of a trial at Imperial College London.
The trials are among many across the world – there are around 120 vaccine programmes under way. After this first phase, another trial is being planned for October, involving 6,000 people. The Imperial team hopes the vaccine could be distributed in the UK and overseas from early 2021.
Many traditional vaccines are based on a weakened or modified form of virus, or parts of it, but the Imperial vaccine is based on a new approach, using synthetic strands of genetic code, called RNA, which mimic the virus. Once injected into muscle, the RNA self-amplifies – generating copies of itself – and instructs the body’s own cells to make copies of a spike protein found on the outside of the virus.
This should train the immune system to recognise and fight coronavirus without having to develop Covid-19.
Because only a tiny amount of genetic code is used in the Imperial vaccine, a little goes a very long way. The Imperial team says one litre of its synthetic material will be enough to produce two million doses.