Baltimore Sun: University of Maryland Injects Coronavirus Vaccine in First Volunteers, Aiming for Approvals in Fall

By May 5, 2020News

The trial at the university’s Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health and three other sites in the United States and Germany is for four separate but similar vaccines developed by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and the German biotech company BioNTech. Pfizer planned to announce the U.S. trials Tuesday morning.

“We’re not skipping any steps, but we are speeding them up quite a bit,” said Dr. Kirsten Lyke, an infectious disease expert and the study’s lead investigator in Baltimore. “This vaccine is actually four different vaccines, with testing moving rapidly, head-to-head. … We’re hoping one rises to the top.”

Lyke, a professor of medicine and faculty member at the university’s vaccine development center, said she and other researchers learned a lot from work on quick-moving threats such as the Ebola virus about how to expedite the vaccine trial process.

There are no vaccines or even specific treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by this coronavirus. With almost 250,000 deaths globally and more than 68,000 in the United States, federal and international regulators have moved with urgency and allowed several vaccine trials to move ahead at unprecedented speed. More than one vaccine likely will be approved and needed to protect billions of people across the globe.

Read more via the Baltimore Sun

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