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Questions remain following first COVID-19 vaccine results

CanSino and Moderna are the first vaccine makers to report data on safety and neutralization, but the extent of protection these products afford remains unclear.
  1. Cormac Sheridan

    1. Dublin, Ireland

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Neutralizing antibodies are the benchmark for testing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Brain light / Alamy Stock Photo

CanSino Biologics and a team of researchers from seven different Chinese institutions have published the results of a phase 1 trial of the company’s SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein vaccine. The intramuscularly injected adenoviral vaccine elicited both neutralizing antibodies and a T-cell response in a phase 1 study in 108 volunteers. A week earlier, Moderna raised a cool $1.34 billion in a share offering after it press-released preliminary data from just eight healthy volunteers from a phase 1 trial of its mRNA vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. The limited data released suggest that their vaccine can stimulate the production of neutralizing antibodies and appears to be safe in a tiny group of individuals; it is not clear how these relate to antibody responses in the general population.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41587-020-00015-x

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