Washington: Johnson & Johnson announced Thursday that a vaccine candidate currently in human trials has shown success in protecting monkeys from coronavirus.
The company said the potential vaccine — Ad26.COV2-S — produced a “robust immune response” in the animals and prevented them from being infected by the virus, which causes COVID-19.
“We are excited to see these pre-clinical data because they show our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate generated a strong antibody response and provided protection with a single dose,” said Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson. “The findings give us confidence as we progress our vaccine development and upscale manufacturing in parallel, having initiated a Phase I/IIa trial in July with the intention to move into a Phase III trial in September.”
The experimental vaccine is vector-based and uses an Ad26 virus to take the coronavirus spike protein gene to human cells. The cells then use the spike gene to replicate the coronavirus proteins and protect themselves from the virus.
