Coronavirus vaccine developed at Oxford reportedly generates 'double defense' against virus in human trials
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel explains.
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel said news of a "double protection" vaccine being formulated in the United Kingdom is very promising and its advent is "important news."
Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University-Langone medical center, said on "America's Newsroom" that "double protection" means that, if found potent and successful, the vaccine will produce both neutralizing antibodies and provide a second protection by boosting T-Cell immunity.
"[N]ot only does the vaccine make neutralizing antibodies – and that’s what neutralizing is, exactly what it sounds like; antibodies that attack and killed a spike protein on the virus killing the virus – the second layer of protection is called T-Cell immunity, the other immune cell we have that goes after viruses and that is the cell that really destroys viruses," he said.
"It’s designed to attack viruses, so the study out of Oxford University being published in Lancet today [is] looking at 1,000 patients, volunteers and early trials, but that’s a large number of early trials."
He said the key to the trial phase is whether the vaccine is potent against the virus itself.
"If you had the virus in your system, does the vaccine protect you from being infected by it? That remains to be seen."
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Siegel added that, if successful, the Oxford-studied vaccine could be ready by the end of 2020, and that a U.S. program called Operation Warp Speed would accelerate the mass production of the vaccine to an amount of 300 million doses – if this vaccine is proven effective.
"So, the manufacturing is not going to slow down the process here, which is what’s never been done before in human history. The science has been at a very prodigious pace but they are going to the hot spots around the world – Brazil, the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa – going to areas where there is virus and testing it right now with 30,000 people," he said.
"Those trials are underway. Those trials should be completed by the late fall. This vaccine works, we should know by the end of the year."
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