Sinopharm, a China-based pharmaceutical firm, has launched a Phase III clinical trial in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to test its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The candidate drug is said to be the first inactivated vaccine in the world to go into a Phase III test, Ashish Koshy, chief executive officer of G42 Healthcare, said. Inactivated vaccines are known and have been administered against measles and influenza diseases.
The trial is being performed by Sinopharm's China National Biotec Group, in collaboration with G42, an artificial intelligence firm located in Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi government.
The trial will be conducted by health care professionals from Abu Dhabi Health Services. There is also a mobile clinic being used to ensure easy access for the 15,000 trial subjects.
The study, which started Wednesday, is the world's first phase III trial of an inactivated vaccine, said Ashish Koshy, CEO of G42 Healthcare. Inactivated vaccines are well known and have been used against influenza and measles diseases.
No vaccine for COVID-19 has been granted approval for commercial use yet. According to a World Health Organization review of the state of drug production for COVID-19, there are 23 possible vaccines for testing effectiveness in human trials, with three of them in or beginning large-scale late stage, or final phase, trials.
Inactivated vaccines or "terminated" vaccines are made using so-called "wild" pathogens or bacteria that have been rendered ineffective or attenuated before being used in the vaccine.
The test is scheduled to last for 42 days. The vaccine will be tested on volunteers aged 18 to 60 who reside in Abu Dhabi City and Al Ain in the Emirate, according to the Abu Dhabi government media office.
According to Jingjin Zhu, president of biological products at Sinopharm CNBG, the team of researchers will work closely with their partners to complete the clinical tests successfully, and "make this vaccine available to the people in need globally," IANS of Mangalorean quoted Jingjin as saying, in his report.
SEHA and G42 are working closely toward a minimum of 5,000 subjects in the initial phase of the program to guarantee the effectiveness of the results.
The program will test two vaccine strains and a placebo. Two doses will be given to the subjects three weeks apart and followed for a year, Nawal Alkaabi, director of the UAE COVID-19 Clinical Management Committee, disclosed.
The UAE was the preferred choice for the program to conduct the Phase III tests for the inactivated vaccine as the Gulf state is home to over 200 nationalities, allowing for large-scale studies across various types of ethnicities, boosting the vaccine's feasibility for worldwide application, health experts said.
