SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Inovio Pharmaceuticals has launched phase one of their clinical trial for a coronavirus vaccine.
On Monday, Inovio gave the first dose to a volunteer taking part in the trial.
Overall, 40 people will be given two doses and will be monitored for their reaction.
Phase one seeks to test whether the vaccine is safe for humans. It will also test for immunogenicity, the measure of desired immune responses in the blood.
If successful, they would move on to phase two which would involve giving the vaccine to about one million test subjects, said Kate Broderick, Senior VP of R&D at Inovio.
“We’ve set the internal goal of having 1 million vaccines for testing by end of 2020,” said Broderick.
At earliest, she estimated that would be in the fall of 2020. After which, they would need to collect and analyze the data on the test subjects to determine whether or not the vaccine is effective at blocking the virus.
Then they would have to manufacture hundreds of millions, if not billions, of doses.
“We’re working in parallel with large-scale manufactures to scale up the number of doses that we can generate so that we’re ready when we get the say so to use those vaccines all over the world,” said Broderick.
