Some promising early results are coming out of Moderna, where volunteers who received the company’s coronavirus vaccine have appeared to develop antibodies, according to CNN.
“This is absolutely good news and news that we think many have been waiting for for quite some time,” Tal Zak, M.D., Moderna’s chief medical officer, told the network.
According to the report, Moderna measured antibodies in eight of the dozens of study participants taking part in a Phase 1 clinical trial. All eight of those participants showed that they developed antibodies at levels similar to or greater than the levels seen in people who have naturally recovered from the coronavirus, CNN notes.
“We’ve demonstrated that these antibodies, this immune response, can actually block the virus,” Zaks said. “I think this is a very important first step in our journey toward having a vaccine.”
As CNN notes, Phase 1 clinical trials usually only study a small group of people and is used to determine if the vaccine is safe and does actually stimulate an immune response against the infection.
While promising, the results of the study have not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal. It is still not yet clear if it will work in the real world.
However, Moderna has been given the go-ahead to begin Phase 2 trials, which will study several hundred people.