News of a potential vaccine for the coronavirus emerged earlier this week. "It's quite promising," said Dr. Nancy Nielsen of the development. In discussing a peer-reviewed study in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nielsen, the Senior Associate Dean for Health Policy at UB's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said the potential vaccine will soon be tested on thousands of people.
"This new vaccine has been developed by NIH (National Institutes of Health) and the company Moderna," explained Nielsen, who pointed out the phase one trial involved only 45 patients. "Basically, what they do is they give two doses of the vaccine and followed the people to see what the immune response was and what the side effects were."
The side effects were relatively mild.
"It produced really quite remarkable neutralizing antibodies," Nielsen said.
"They studied three different strengths. So, what will happen next is this will go into what is called phase three trial. And it will be studied in 30,000 volunteers in 87 places in the U.S."
