(Add statement of potential volunteer, expert comment)
By Kate Kelland and Paul Sandle
LONDON, Feb. 17 (Reuters) – Britain on Wednesday became the first country in the world to pave the way for human challenge trials in which volunteers will be deliberately exposed to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease caused by the new coronavirus. .
The trial, which begins within a month, will see up to 90 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 exposed to the smallest amount of viruses needed to cause infection, scientists behind the plans told reporters in a newsletter.
Volunteers will be screened for possible health risks before they may participate, and kept in medical custody for medical staff for at least 14 days in a specialist unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
“The absolute priority, of course, is the safety of volunteers,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, who co-chairs the UK Government’s Vaccine Task Force and clinical firm hVIVO. “None of us want to do that when there is a significant risk.”
Scientists have been using human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhus and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.
Participants in the UK COVID-19 challenge hearing will only be allowed to go home after the initial 14 days if ‘extensive tests’ show that they are not contagious, said Chris Chiu, Imperial’s investigator.
Campaigns by a group called 1Day Sooner, which has urged governments around the world to conduct human challenge trials with the new coronavirus, welcomed the UK and said it would speed up research on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
Alistair Fraser-Urquhart, a campaigner who said he would like to take part in the study, said in a statement that he had ‘spent a long time on the risks, but that he was’ ready to take advantage’ of others’. .
Chiu said the purpose of this initial work is “to understand how the virus infects people and how it is so successfully transmitted between us.”
Further trials using the challenge models could then be done in the coming months and years to determine which vaccinations and treatments work best, he said.
Volunteers receive a fee of approximately £ 88 ($ 122) per day for the duration of the study. It will also include a year-long follow-up monitoring, Chiu’s team said. The studies will be done in a safe and controlled environment. will reduce any risk.
To make the trial as safe as possible, the version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has been circulating in England since March 2020 will be used as one of the new variants.
Lawrence Young, a virologist and professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick who is not involved in the study, said that it – like similar pathogens to it – should provide essential insights into the SARS-CoV-2- virus.
“Human challenge trials … have been used to study infections … ranging from cold viruses to malaria,” he said. “Such controlled studies provide insight into the host-pathogen interaction, facilitate the identification of correlations of protection, and accelerate the development of vaccines and new therapies.”
($ 1 = 0.7213 lbs) (Edited by Bernadette Baum)
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