Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and UCHealth at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus will be conducting a vaccine trial throughout Colorado for a study on testing a promising COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
UCHealth and the CU School of Medicine will recruit 1,000 patients for the upcoming trial, and participants will be monitored for at least a year to determine the vaccine’s safety and whether they contract COVID-19. This includes patients who could be vulnerable because of their occupation, such as employees of crowded facilities, health care workers, first responders, and those who work in food processing facilities. UCHealth will also recruit individuals in higher risk groups including Black, Indigenous and Hispanic patients including those over 65 years old and people suffering from various chronic diseases.
The vaccine’s purpose is to induce an antibody response against the protein that would prevent the virus from infecting cells. This method hopefully will stimulate the body’s immune system without exposing someone to the actual virus.
Clinical trials typically take several years and proceed in sequential order, but the vaccine trial is proceeding far more rapidly as researchers around the world race to develop a successful vaccine. However, physicians warn that setbacks are possible. Dr. Thomas Campbell, infectious disease researcher at UCHealth remarked, “I’m certainly hopeful that we’ll have success, but the sad reality is that most vaccine candidates don’t turn out to be successful, so we have to be prepared for failures as well.”
~ Courtesy of UCHealth