Article content continued

“You’re planning on administering it to a healthy person who may or may not ever be exposed to the infectious disease agent you’re trying to protect them against,” said Rajeev Venkayya, president of the global vaccine unit at Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., said in a separate interview Tuesday. “There’s very little margin for a safety problem.”

CanSino’s trial involves injecting the experimental vaccine into 108 healthy adults, aged 18 to 60, in three different doses, according to data from the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry. Tests will start this month and continue through year’s end. The vaccine was tested on animals and proven safe and capable of eliciting immunity against the virus, CanSino said in its statement.

Photo by Achmad Ibrahim/AP

As the outbreak spread around the world, more than 100 clinical trials were launched in China to study the effectiveness of everything from anti-flu drugs and antibody-containing plasma from recovered patients, to traditional Chinese herbal medicine. A smaller number of trials have been announced in countries including the U.S., South Korea and Thailand.

In normal circumstances, a vaccine could take years to reach human clinical trials as scientists conduct substantial amounts of animal testing first before drug regulators greenlight further trials to determine its safety and efficacy on humans.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc said last month it was working with China-based Clover Biopharmaceuticals on an experimental vaccine. Also, the U.S. government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is working with Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson on potential vaccines.

Photo by Kin Cheung/AP

Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. also licensed a vaccine that’s now being developed at the pre-clinical stage by Mainz, Germany-based BioNTech SE.

Despite the rapid introduction of human trials, the earliest available vaccine is at least six months away, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it would take about a year-and-a-half to complete trials, scale-up production and make a vaccine widely available.