Coronavirus: fifth Chinese Covid-19 vaccine candidate ready to enter phase 3 trials
- Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical looks to recruit 29,000 people for final tests, first of which will start this month in Uzbekistan
- Announcement comes as China National Biotec Group says it is preparing to review the results of final stage trials of two of its products
Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical said on Thursday it was planning to recruit 29,000 people aged 18 and older for phase 3 trials of its recombinant subunit vaccine candidate. The first of the tests would begin later this month in Uzbekistan, followed by Indonesia, Pakistan and Ecuador, it said.
The news comes as state-owned China National Biotec Group (CNBG) on Friday began reviewing the phase 3 trial data for its two inactivated vaccines, Yang Xiaoming, chairman of parent company Sinopharm, said.
Professor Yan Jinghua from the Institute of Microbiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, whose team developed the Anhui Zhifei Longcom vaccine, told an industry conference on Friday that early stage trials had shown the product to be safe and capable of producing high levels of antibodies.
While the results of the phase 2 trials, which ended at the end of October, had yet to be published, Yan said the safety data was “excellent” and 97 per cent of trial participants developed high levels of neutralising antibodies, an indicator of immunity.
The antibody level in the test subjects was twice that found in a sample of 89 people who had recovered from Covid-19, she said.
The product is the first recombinant subunit vaccine in China to enter phase 3 trials.