The work on a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is entering another stage—and at an express pace! Polityka.pl:
Clinical trials of a preparation developed at the end of February by Moderna Therapeutics have just begun in the United States. The vaccine was prepared in just 42 days from the moment the company’s scientists sequenced the coronavirus genome. Healthy people aged 11–55 were recruited for the study and received two doses of the vaccine by injection into the upper arm.
The preclinical phase—testing the vaccine on animals—was omitted. And much suggests that, if the results of the first phase of testing are promising, the remaining phases will be shortened. Details are available on the website of the weekly Polityka.
Let us recall. On Saturday, March 14, we reported that the Office for Registration of Medicinal Products, Medical Devices and Biocidal Products had issued a positive decision on allowing the drug named Arechin to be used to treat infections with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It is a product of the Polish company Adamed.
Arechin contains chloroquine phosphate. This substance had previously been used to treat and prevent malaria and rheumatoid arthritis. As wp.pl writes, Chinese scientists were reportedly to have conducted clinical trials of its effectiveness during the epidemic caused by the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus.
It turned out that chloroquine produces a positive therapeutic effect in pneumonia associated with Covid-19. Patients showed a faster decrease in fever and required less time to recover compared with groups treated with other therapies.