Global Quest Underway to Speed COVID-19 Vaccine Trials

• Scientists are working on a benchmark for COVID-19 vaccine efficacy that would allow drug-makers to conduct smaller, speedier human trials to get them to market and address a huge global vaccine shortage. 
• Researchers are trying to determine just what level of COVID-19 antibodies a vaccine must produce to provide protection against the illness. Regulators already use such benchmarks - known as correlates of protection - to evaluate flu vaccines without requiring large, lengthy clinical trials. 
• Stanley Plotkin, inventor of the Rubella vaccine and an expert on correlates of protection highlighted that," Information is flowing in," he said. "By the end of this year, I think there will be enough data to convince everyone”. An established benchmark for COVID-19 would allow drug makers to conduct vaccine trials in just a few thousand people, about one-tenth the size of the studies conducted to gain authorization for currently widely-used coronavirus shots.

(Source: Reuters)