Business View Magazine | August 2020

9 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2020 COVID-19 VACCINES TEST SAFE & EFFECTIVE BY CHINA & UK TEAM G ood news. On July 20th, The Lancet published two papers online at the same time, revealing the results of clinical trials for two COVID-19 vaccines. From China and the United Kingdom respectively, the two stars on the track of adenovirus vector vaccine display a one-on-one competition. What are the similarities and differences between the two vaccines in terms of clinical trial design and results despite that they have taken the same R&D approach? What are the characteristics of Chinese vaccines’ R&D? How to perceive the potential of Oxford’s vaccine? Two-dose Protection or Single-dose immunity, which is more effective? Led by Chen Wei, academician at China Academy of Engineering and researcher at Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Ad5-nCoV is the first COVID-19 vaccine around the globe to enter Phase II clinical trial. The most important feature of the trial is that eligible participants over 60 years old are involved, consisting 13% of the 508 total participants. CanSino Biologics Inc. (CanSinoBIO) is in partnership with Chen’s team regarding vaccine development. The President of CanSinoBIO, Yu Xuefeng, interviewed by Science and Technology Daily, noted, “From the perspective of trial design, the two trials share the same mechanism, namely inducing balanced humoral and cellular immune responses. There are also differences. We hope that a single-dose can be effective in the time of pandemic whereas the Oxford team further testes a ‘two-dose’ protection.” According to news from Oxford website, Professor Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said, “We saw the strongest immune response in the 10 participants who received two doses of the vaccine, indicating that this might be a good strategy for vaccination.” Yu held a different view. He thought that the “fastest would be a single-dose injection” under the trend of the pandemic. The result of Chinese Vaccine’s Phase II clinical trial showed that 95% of the participants in the high-dose group and 91% in the low-dose group showed either cellular or humoral immune responses at day 28 after vaccination.”This means that single-dose vaccine not only takes effect quickly, but also has potential to be effective of vaccination.” One thing to note is that the elderly participants have a higher tolerability for the vaccine whereas they also display a lower level of OPENING L INES