LONDON: 16, JULY, 2020: The two world's most promising studies to develop a vaccine for coronavirus have revealed that the subjects in their trials have shown early signs of immunity in virus patients. 

The teams at Oxford University in the UK and pharmaceutical company Moderna in the US, run these trials.

The trials, have both received significant funding by the government in their efforts to develop their vaccines before the end of the year. 

The Oxford vaccine, being manufactured by AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, England, has already had millions of doses mass-produced in the event of the trials proving a success.

The team expressed hope that it is “80 percent confident” of it being available by September.

It aims to facilitate an immune system response by mimicking COVID-19 itself, and training antibodies to attack the spike proteins on the virus’s exterior that it uses to attach itself to human cells. When experienced with coronavirus, in theory the immune system should then act in the same fashion. 

"An important point to keep in mind is that there are two dimensions to the immune response: Antibodies and T-cells," a source at Oxford told ITV News in the UK. 

"Everybody is focused on antibodies, but there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the T-cells response is important in the defense against coronavirus." 

She told UK MPs on the House of Commons’ science and technology select committee "Vaccines have a different way of engaging with the immune system, and we follow people in our studies using the same type of technology to make the vaccines for several years, and we still see strong immune responses." 

"It’s something we have to test and follow over time — we can’t know until we actually have the data, but we’re optimistic based on earlier studies that we’ll see a good duration of immunity, for several years at least, and probably better than naturally acquired immunity," she added. 

Moderna, reported that all volunteers in its early phase had developed immune responses after receiving its vaccine, with over half its subjects facing mild or moderate side effects including headaches, fatigue and muscle pain. Its vaccine, called mRNA-1273, uses ribonucleic acid to program human cells to make proteins similar to the spike proteins of COVID-19 cells, training the body’s immune system to identify and attack them.

Its preliminary studies revealed that higher doses of mRNA-1273 in the human system corresponded with higher levels of immunity in subjects, by injecting people with doses of 25, 100 or 250 micrograms of the vaccine in two instalments over 28 days. 

The director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said: "No matter how you slice this, this is good news." 

Sir Mene Pangalos, head AstraZeneca’s research into respiratory diseases, said: "There’s a population who are elderly that (may not) get a particularly good immune response to the vaccine. In those instances you might want to prophylactically treat those patients with an antibody to give them additional protection." (04)