Johnson & Johnson’s Potential Coronavirus Vaccine Prevented Severe Illness In Small Group Of Hamsters

Johnson & Johnson is taking their shot at finding a vaccine for the raging coronavirus, and researchers for the company claim their potential vaccine prevented severe illness in a group of Syrian golden hamsters.

The hamsters received a single dose of the vaccine and then were exposed to the virus four weeks later, CNBC News reports.

The company said the vaccine-elicited neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe are essential to developing immunity to the virus, in hamsters who got the vaccine. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Researchers also found that vaccinated hamsters appeared to lose less weight compared to the unvaccinated group of hamsters and did not experience severe clinical disease, including pneumonia or mortality. The findings were published in the medical journal Nature Medicine on Thursday.

“This pre-clinical study further validates our confidence in our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate,” J&J’s Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said in a press release. “With our Phase 3 trials planned to start this month, we remain committed to expanding our manufacturing and distribution capabilities to enable global access to our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate should it prove to be safe and effective in humans.”

Although the results among hamsters seem promising, it does not necessarily mean the vaccine will provide the same level of protection among humans, however, Johnson & Johnson researchers noted their findings are significant as COVID-19 is known to progress into severe disease in some humans.

J&J is one of many companies working diligently to find a vaccine for the virus. The company hopes to begin a 60,000-person late-stage trial testing of its vaccine sometime this month, if so, it would be the largest trial testing of the coronavirus vaccine this far.

On August 5, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it reached a deal with Janssen, J&J’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, which is worth around $ 1 billion for 100 million doses of the company’s vaccine. The deal will also give the federal government the option to order an additional 200 million doses.

In its search to find a vaccine, the company says it is using the same technologies for its COVID-19 vaccine that is used to make its experimental Ebola vaccine, which was offered to people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The process involves mixing genetic material from the virus with a modified adenovirus that is known to cause common colds among humans.

Participants in the phase three trial will be randomly chosen to receive a dose of the potential vaccine or the placebo, details of the trial reports, which will help determine whether the vaccine is safe and effective, researches will follow the participants for more than two years.