The Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford has today agreed a contract with Advent Srl, in Italy to produce the first batch of the novel coronavirus vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 for clinical testing.
The vaccine ‘seed stock’ is currently being produced at the University’s Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility. This will be transferred to Advent who will initially produce 1000 doses for the first clinical trials of this vaccine.
The Jenner Institute has been working on a vaccine against another coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has been shown to induce strong immune responses against MERS after a single dose of the vaccine in the first clinical trial which took place in Oxford. A second clinical trial of the MERS vaccine is underway in Saudi Arabia, which is where most MERS cases have occurred. The same approach to making the vaccine is being taken for the novel coronavirus vaccine.
Read more on The Jenner Institute website (Nuffield Department of Medicine)
This story is also featured on the University of Oxford website