Johnson & Johnson conducted a new advanced-phase clinical test Monday to examine a two-shot treatment of its potential coronavirus vaccine and evaluate possible incremental benefits for protection with a second dose.
The New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company is looking to enroll around 30,000 patients for the trial and run it side by side with a one-dose test involving as many as 60,000 participants that started in September.
Through its Janssen subsidiary, Johnson & Johnson will administer its candidate vaccine to 6,000 volunteers in the UK in two doses in a third-stage test, which is normally the final step before vaccine producers approach regulators for approval.
The trial is good news for markets as they expect a return to normalcy when the drugs become available to the populations. It follows last week's release from BioNTech and Pfizer who announced they had identified 94 cases of the virus among 43,538 test patients.
Johnson & Johnson's potential vaccine is the third experimental drug to enter final-phase tests in the UK, after one developed by U.S. biotech Novavax and another being jointly developed by Oxford University and British pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca.
Rival vaccine makers BioNtech and Pfizer last week disclosed that their investigational COVID vaccine showed over 90% efficacy in initial data from an advanced-phase test, boosting optimism that treatments against the virus may be ready for distribution soon. Over 200 biotech groups are scrambling to develop immunizations, the World Health Organization said.
Britain has accumulated a 350 million-vaccine portfolio comprised of six different potential treatments that employ four unique technologies. If the Johnson & Johnson trials show the vaccine is safe, 30 million doses could be rolled out for use in the UK by the middle of next year, based on estimates.
"It is very important that we pursue clinical tests of different vaccines from different manufacturers and be able to ensure the supply both to the UK and global population," Reuters quoted Saul Faust as saying. Faust is a professor of pediatric immunology and infectious diseases and co-leads the test at University Hospital Southampton.
