Moderna's Early COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Show Promising Results

There was some good news in the fight against coronavirus on Monday as drug maker Moderna said that its vaccine induced immune responses in healthy volunteers in a clinical study. The volunteers made antibodies that matched or exceeded the levels found in patients who had recovered after contracting the virus. Moderna will now move into Phase 2 trials with more people involved in that study and then Phase 3 they hope to begin in July. Moderna ultimately hopes to have something ready by the fall, but we are still some time away from having a vaccine to be distributed widely. I'll tell you what you need to know.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, May. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive
podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
On Monday, we had some good news in the fight
against coronavirus. The world has been waiting for a vaccine,
some type of effective treatment for COVID nineteen, and drug

(00:20):
maker Maderna said on Monday that it's experimental coronavirus vaccine
had induced an immune response and some of the healthy
volunteers who are vaccinated in a clinical study. These are
the first results for the first vaccine that has entered
human testing. So these results are very preliminary and only
for a portion of the study participants. But at this

(00:42):
point any news that we're getting on the good side
of it is being looked at very closely. According to
a Maderna chief executive, they said that the data suggests
that this vaccine it's called m RNA twelve seventy three,
has a high probability to provide protection from COVID nineteen
disease in humans. And when something like this happens, shares

(01:04):
on Wall Street go up. I think they went up
about scent for Maderna after news of this had come out.
So while we have some good news right now with this,
we're still quite a way as before we will actually
have a vaccine. The company said that their vaccine could
be ready for emergency use as early as the fall
if it continues to work in other testing. The f

(01:26):
d A has given Maderna permission to begin their second
stage of testing, which the Phase two trial is going
to be could involve about six people possibly and the
phase three trial they said they could begin that in July.
So things are moving very fast in this sense, but
things might not be ready for the fall at the earliest.

(01:49):
So a little bit more about this particular vaccine. Maderna
co designed this vaccine with the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases and they're the ones that are leading
the clinical trial aile that began in March, and for
some of the participants that ranged in age from eighteen
to fifty five, they were given various doses of the
vaccine and it's said an increased immune responses including boost

(02:12):
and certain antibodies to levels at or above those seen
and blood samples from people who have recovered from COVID
nineteen so people that have recovered from covid nanteene have
a certain level of antibodies. This vaccine was providing them
with that same amount or more at least, and the
responses they said included both binding antibodies which attached the

(02:33):
viruses but don't prevent infection, as well as neutralizing anybodies
which do block infection. So it's working on two fronts
and the news is good on both. The results don't
show whether the vaccine actually protected people from the disease
caused by the virus. That's going to be looked at
in further studies, but the antibodies are there. As far

(02:54):
as side effects go, there weren't really too many. One
participant experience redness around the injection site, and three other
subjects that we're receiving the highest dose that they were
giving in these tests had systemic symptoms, which includes things
like fever, muscle pains, and headaches, but they said that
those symptoms went away after a day. That high dose,

(03:15):
by the way, is being eliminated from future studies, not
necessarily because of the side effects, but because the lower
doses appear to work so well that the high dose
is not needed uh, and that could be very beneficial
That if they go with the lower dose, because that
will allow companies to manufacture more of the vaccine and
have it more readily available for people to use. So,

(03:36):
while this is all very good news, the findings actually
don't prove that the vaccine works just yet. We still
need larger, longer studies to determine whether it can prevent
people from getting it in real world situations. The other
thing about Maderna's vaccine is that they're using genetic material
from the virus called messenger rna UH and it's sometimes

(03:56):
they call it m RNA. This whole process and making
vaccines in this way is still relatively new and has
yet to produce any approved vaccine. But so far the
news is good and they're going to keep working on
this one. But what happens next, you know. The next
part of this is that governments and drug makers are
looking at how to roll out a coronavirus vaccine, including

(04:21):
reserving some of the first batches for healthcare workers and
those that are very essential. There's more than a hundred
vaccines and development globally right now, and at least eight
have started testing in humans. That includes the one from
our dinner. We're just talking about others from Fiser as well,
and the big giants like Johnson and Johnson, Astra, Zenica, Snofi.

(04:42):
They're building up their capacity to make hundreds of millions
of doses on their own or their partners vaccines once
they get approved and once they're proven to work. So
there's still a long way to go on this, and
right now, this is this larger rush right now to
to line up funding for accelerated testing and expanded manufacturing,
because once the vaccine gets approved, that's the next step

(05:03):
we have to manufacture enough of that vaccine to start
using it more widely. There's a lot of drug makers
who have been building up their capabilities to make these vaccines,
and they've pledged to deliver millions of doses this year. Um,
but you know, a big supply to vaccinate the general
population might not really become available until well into That's

(05:23):
why we keep talking about with these things, with these
with the vaccines, it's a long game. It takes a
long time to get this and public health officials and
vaccine experts hope that more than one vaccine will cross
the finish line to boost the total number of doses available.
As we said, Maderna right now is the only one
with some good news, So hopefully a few other vaccine
candidates start sharing some good findings. And with this limited

(05:47):
supply that's going to be initially available of these vaccines,
everybody's already trying to see who would get first DIBs
on this. So companies receiving US federal grants like Johnson
and john and Maderna, Sinophie, they're expected to reserve some
of those doses for Americans. But really the first groups
to get all of this it would be at at

(06:08):
the head of the line for this would be any
frontline healthcare workers, first responders, essential workers like grocery, pharmacy,
food supply and mass transit employees. Uh you know, as
we've been talking about for some time now, these essential
employees that keep the economy going um, so they would
all be at the front of the line to get
some type of potential vaccine. So, overall, some good news

(06:30):
from Maderna. Hopefully, as I mentioned, we can get some
more good news from other companies that are testing their
own vaccines, but for now, some promising results out of Maderna.
I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been your daily coronavirus update.
You don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you
can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every

(06:50):
Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio
or wherever you get your podcast