Cambridge: Moderna Inc on Monday announced that it has started the late-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, in the US. The phase 3 randomized, placebo-controlled trial, called the COVE (Coronavirus Efficacy) study, involves about 30, 000 healthy adults, making it the world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine study to date.
According to Moderna, the main goal of the study is to assess whether its mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine can help prevent symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2. The company said in a press release that it has begun dosing participants with its vaccine made using synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) to inoculate against the coronavirus. Moderna is conducting the phase 3 COVE study in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
“We are pleased to have started the Phase 3 COVE study,” said Stephane Bancel, CEO at Moderna. “We are grateful to the efforts of so many inside and outside the company to get us to this important milestone. We are indebted to the participants and investigators who now begin the work of the COVE study itself. We look forward to this trial demonstrating the potential of our vaccine to prevent COVID-19, so that we can defeat this pandemic.”
Post Your Comments