A British biotech firm is closer to creating “Human Challenge” trials of potentially Covid-19 vaccines, where volunteers are deliberately infected with the disease. A unit of pharmaceutical services company Open Orphan, hVIVO is carrying out preliminary work for the trials, which aim to speed up the process of determining the efficacy of a vaccine candidate. If agreed, this would involve creating a human challenge study model that could be used should such trials gain ethical and safety approval from regulators.
Supporters of human challenge trials say they are a good way to cut short the often lengthy process of testing potential vaccines on tens of thousands of volunteers in the real world who go about normal life and are monitored to see if they contract the disease or are protected from it.
Volunteers in these tightly-controlled trials are given a vaccine and then about a month later, are deliberately infected with the disease under controlled conditions. They are then isolated in a quarantine facility and monitored to see if they become sick and whether the vaccine protects them.
