By Mary O’KEEFE
Phase 1 clinical trials for the SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] vaccine continue at the City of Hope. Don Diamond, Ph.D., a professor with the City of Hope Dept. of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, cannot say specifically how the vaccine research is progressing but does remain hopeful for a positive outcome.
The one thing that is slowing down the Phase 1 trials is the need for volunteers.
“Everything is going smoothly but slowly,” he said in a Tuesday interview with CVW.
There is a dilemma that is being faced in the development and journey to vaccine approval; while the development and approval is going quickly when compared to past vaccine approvals the approval process is considered slow in this new pandemic world.
Diamond has worked on the development of three other vaccines and the one for COVID-19 has been, by far, the fastest from lab to clinical trial.
“We started [initially] in February [2020] and clinical trials started in December,” he said. “It is remarkably fast from lab to the clinical [trials].”
This pace has not reduced the attention to all details surrounding the vaccine, but it does change the perspective of those who are working it.
“The urgency of a pandemic makes you think differently about the pace of your own work,” he said.
The City of Hope will obviously not be in the first rounds of vaccines distributed but will, if trials continue to go well, be part of the second round.
“To produce the investigational vaccine, a team of City of Hope scientists, led by Felix Wussow, Ph.D., and Flavia Chiuppesi, Ph.D., and both City of Hope assistant research professors in the Dept. of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, together with Diamond, first developed a synthetic modified vaccinia ankara (sMVA) platform technology to house the genetic components that make up the compound at a molecular level. MVA is a weakened poxvirus that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of smallpox and monkeypox, and is also included in the federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile for lifesaving use during a public health emergency,” according to a statement from the City of Hope.
There are new variants to COVID-19 and those who are currently working or have worked on vaccines are looking at studying these new variants to see how effective current vaccines will be on these new strains.
Diamond said their process is researching the new variants to hopefully generate a new form of vaccine that will be effective against the variants. He looks at a two-shot inoculation in which the second shot will be “sufficient to protect against the current [variant].”
“Viruses are tricky sometimes. What you think you know you don’t know,” he said of possible variants that will be discovered.
The vaccines that are currently available are reported to be effective against the variants; however, they may not be as effective as they are against the original strain.
“It would be better if one had a formulation to give a greater immunity against the variants,” he said. “We are working on that.”
Diamond said that if a person is exposed to a variant strain of COVID-19 the current vaccines have been found to protect against possible severe symptoms that would require hospitalization.
“Ultimately you want to protect someone from being infected from the virus,” he said. “I speak to a lot of people who have the effects [from COVID-19] that drag on for months. It is best to be protected from it as soon as you can. That is the most important criterion.”
The challenge is having enough vaccines for everyone to be vaccinated quickly. More approved vaccines will help everyone get protected faster.
With more volunteers the City of Hope and Diamond can get to Phase 2 of their vaccine approval process quicker. They are reaching out to the community for those who are interested in volunteering.
Volunteers from 18 to 54 years old are needed. Anyone interested can contact City of Hope at covidvaccine@coh.org.
City of Hope is a non-profit hospital. Those who would like to donate, specifically for the research and development of a COVID-19 vaccine, can do so by going to cityofhope.org/Covid19Gift