Healthy, healthy young volunteers who have previously had COVID-19 will be deliberately exposed to the coronavirus for the second time to see how the immune system responds, as part of a new study in the UK.
Researchers at Oxford University on Monday launched the “human challenge” trial to investigate what happens when volunteers who have recovered from coronavirus disease are reinfected with the virus for the second time.
The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is expected to begin in the coming weeks after receiving ethics approval, and could help accelerate the development of new treatments and vaccines against the disease.
Studies on human challenges have played a crucial role in the development of treatments for various diseases, including malaria, typhoid, cholera, and influenza.
Read: Only 50 people are known to have contracted COVID-19 more than once, but new strains have medical experts on high alert
“A challenge study allows us to do these measurements very accurately because we know exactly when someone is infected,” said Helen McShane, a professor of vaccinology in the pediatric department at Oxford University and lead researcher on the study.
“The information in this work will allow us to design better vaccines and treatments, and also understand if people are protected after having COVID and for how long,” McShane said.
Read: COVID-19 infection is likely to provide immunity for at least 5 months, but people can transmit the virus, according to the study
The first phase of the trial will include up to 64 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 who have previously been naturally infected with COVID-19. Efforts will be made to establish the lowest dose of virus that can be caught and begin to replicate in approximately 50% of participants, producing few or no symptoms.
Volunteers will be monitored in a safe and controlled environment while being quarantined in a specially designed hospital suite for a minimum of 17 days. Anyone who develops coronavirus symptoms will receive Regeneron REGN,
treatment of monoclonal antibodies.
Once the standard dose is established, it will be used to infect different volunteers in the second phase of the trial, which will begin in the summer. The full duration of the study will be 12 months, including a minimum of eight follow-up appointments after medical discharge from volunteers.
Read: Young and healthy adults will be paid £ 4,500 to be deliberately infected with COVID-19 in a new trial
The new study is different from a parallel led by Imperial College London, which was announced in February and will expose up to 90 carefully selected healthy adult volunteers to the coronavirus to help researchers understand how the virus infects people. and how it is transmitted.
It turns out that almost ten million people in the UK have received their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the latest government data.
Three vaccines are currently used in the United Kingdom: the one developed jointly by the German biotechnology BioNTech BNTX,
and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer PFE,
; the one produced by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca with the University of Oxford; and the feature of Modern MRNA biotechnology,
Last week, Moderna said it would deliver fewer COVID-19 vaccines than expected in the UK, Canada and other countries, following a production deficit in its European supply chain.