JOHNSON & JOHNSON - WILL BEING PHASE 2 VACCINE TRIALS SHORTLY

 Filenews 28 August 2020

Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit will begin mid-stage testing for its COVID-19 vaccine in Spain, the Netherlands and Germany next week, the Spanish Health Minister announced today, as the US pharmaceutical industry expands testing for its experimental vaccine.

The Phase 2 trials will last two months and involve 550 participants in the three countries, including 190 in Spain, Salvador Iya said at a press conference in Madrid.

"This is a vote of confidence in our health system," Iya said, adding that it is the first human trial of an anti-coronavirus vaccine approved in Spain. The study will focus on healthy people aged 18 to 55 as well as over-65s. Spain, which has the highest number of infections from the new coronavirus in western Europe, is also working together with AstraZeneca through the European Union's vaccine procurement programme to ensure a sufficient number of doses. J&J's website says that if the trials are successful, it will begin the final Phase 3 studies, in which even more volunteers will receive the experimental vaccine. More than 150 candidate vaccines are being developed and tested worldwide to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, with 30 being tested in humans.

So far there is no approved vaccine against COVID-19, except for the one licensed in Russia before large-scale trials are launched. J&J is testing in the United States and Belgium, and earlier this week added Chile, Argentina and Peru to the list of Latin American countries where it plans to conduct Phase 3 trials on 60,000 volunteers, in a study that will also cover Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The company's potential vaccine uses "vectors" to trigger an immune response, similar to the approach taken by Oxford University and AstraZeneca in their own experimental vaccine, as well as Chinese CanSino.

Source: eyenews/KYPE