China developing 9 potential vaccines in global race for coronavirus cure

Company making front-runner appeals for people to take part in trial stage, which nine potential Chinese vaccines are set to enter in April

US trialling vaccine that copies virus’ genetic code, amid international search for a drug to help limit the outbreak’s human and economic impact

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CanSino is recruiting healthy volunteers for a clinical trial of its vaccine candidate. Photo: Weibo

Published: 11:39am, 18 Mar 2020Updated: 1:01am, 19 Mar 2020

The race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine is on, with the United States already starting a clinical trial and China close behind.

On Tuesday, vaccine producer CanSino Biologics, in Tianjin in China’s northeast, said it was looking for volunteers to take part in a six-month clinical trial of a treatment it had developed jointly with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

“The vaccine does not contain infectious substances, is highly safe and stable, and requires only one inoculation,” the Hubei Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its request for volunteers.

Its announcement came a day after the first participant began a phase I trial for an experimental vaccine funded by the US National Institutes of Health and developed by biotech startup Moderna.

It uses messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology that copies the genetic code of the virus instead of the actual virus. To date, no mRNA vaccine has been approved for humans.

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