Gaithersburg鈥檚 Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) is gaining ground in the coronavirus vaccine marathon.
The local biotech has initiated its first phase 3 trial in the United Kingdom while continuing to run other ongoing studies of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, Novavax said Thursday. The U.K. trial 鈥� designed to evaluate the safety, efficacy and immunogenicity of its candidate, NVX-CoV2373 鈥� will involve 10,000 subjects ages 18 to 84, with a quarter over age 65, and prioritizing minorities and others most affected by the virus.
It comes after Novavax released results of phase 1 trials in August, finding the vaccine was generally well-tolerated and showed a 鈥渞obust鈥� response with no 鈥渟evere鈥� side effects. Then it launched the candidate into phase 2 studies in the U.S., Australia and South Africa.
And the South Africa phase 2b trial is an efficacy study, which means it could lead to an approval by a regulatory body like the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Gregory Glenn, president鈥�
