Healthy, young volunteers who previously had COVID-19 will be deliberately exposed to coronavirus for a second time to see how the immune system responds, as part of a new UK study.
Researchers at the University of Oxford on Monday launched the “human challenge” trial to investigate what happens when volunteers who have recovered from coronavirus disease are re-infected with the virus for the second time.
The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is expected to begin within the next few weeks after ethical approval, and could help accelerate the development of new treatments and vaccines against the disease.
Human challenge studies have played a crucial role in the development of treatments for a number of diseases, including malaria, typhoid, cholera and influenza.
Read: It is known that only 50 people have contracted COVID-19 more than once – but new strains have medical experts on their alert
“With a challenging study, we can do these measurements very precisely because we know exactly when someone is infected,” said Helen McShane, professor of vaccination at the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Oxford and lead researcher on the study.
“The information from this work enables us to design better vaccines and treatments, and also to understand whether people are protected after COVID, and for how long,” McShane said.
Read: COVID-19 infection is likely to provide immunity for at least five months, but humans can still transmit virus, the study finds
The first phase of the trial will involve up to 64 volunteers aged 18-30 years who were previously naturally infected with COVID-19. It looks at the lowest dose of virus that can take hold and start repeating in about 50% of participants, while there are few or no symptoms.
Volunteers will be monitored for a minimum of 17 days in a safe, controlled environment in a specially designed hospital set. Anyone who develops coronavirus symptoms will receive Regeneron REGN,
monoclonal antibody treatment.
Once the standard dose has been determined, it will be used to infect different volunteers in the second phase of the trial, which should begin in the summer. The full duration of the study will be 12 months, including a minimum of eight follow-up appointments after volunteers have been discharged.
Read: Young, healthy adults will pay £ 4500 to be deliberately infected with COVID-19 in a new trial
The new study is different from a parallel study led by Imperial College London, which was announced in February, and will expose up to 90 carefully selected adult volunteers to coronavirus to help researchers understand how the virus infects humans and how it be transferred.
This is because almost 10 million people in the UK have now received their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the latest government figures.
Three vaccines are currently used in the UK: the one jointly developed by German biotechnology BioNTech BNTX,
and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer PFE,
; the one manufactured by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca with the University of Oxford; and the shot of the biotechnology Modern MRNA,
Last week, Moderna said it would deliver fewer COVID-19 vaccines to the UK, Canada and other countries than expected, following a shortage of production in its European supply chain.