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Vaccine clinical trials set in Seattle

Kaiser Permanente research institute chosen as trial site

By Ryan Blethen, The Seattle Times
Published: February 28, 2020, 6:01am

The first clinical trials for a vaccine targeting the new coronavirus will take place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.

The vaccine for the virus known as SARS-CoV-2, and the subsequent disease called COVID-19, was developed by Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Moderna, which is one of many companies working to create a vaccine.

It isn’t yet known when the trials will begin, but once they do it could take 13 months and will include 45 healthy people between the ages of 19 and 55, said Linnae Riesen of Kaiser Permanente Washington. If the initial trial is successful, researchers would move on to a second phase called an efficacy trial, which would involve thousands of people. Results wouldn’t be known for many months.

While a vaccine probably won’t be ready for the general public for more than a year, it’s still important to forge ahead because the virus could become seasonal like the flu, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a White House news conference Wednesday.

“If that is the case, we hope to have a vaccine,” he said.

Kaiser’s research institute was chosen as a trial site as one of nine National Institutes of Health designated Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units. The Kaiser institute has been a VTEU since 2007.

Other local efforts to develop a vaccine are also ongoing: HDT Bio is working on a vaccine with PAI Life Sciences, InBios International and the University of Washington School of Medicine. HDT and its partners started working on a vaccine once the virus’ genome sequence was shared by Chinese scientists last month. Animal trials have taken place and the vaccine could be ready for human clinical trials in the next couple of months, said Steven Reed, HDT’s CEO.

The competition to get a vaccine to market is good because the world, like with the flu vaccine, wouldn’t want to be dependent on one vaccine manufacturer, Reed said.

The new coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in the central China province of Hubei. Since people in Wuhan began falling ill from COVID-19 in December, more than 81,000 people globally have been sickened and more than 2,700 people have died.

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