Nashville, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW)- Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will begin recruiting up to 1,000 volunteers in a late-stage study of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
The recruitment for the trial will begin in late July.
The randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial will be open to people 18 years old and older. They will receive two shots of either the vaccine or an inactive placebo and will be followed for two years. Two trial phases are already underway.
“Vaccine development around COVID-19 is moving at an unprecedented pace due to the remarkable partnerships between academic institutions, the NIH and pharmaceutical industry leaders,” said Buddy Creech, MD, MPH, principal investigator of the NIH-funded Vanderbilt Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU).
“We are pressing full speed ahead to provide an answer to this pandemic, while also taking the necessary steps to ensure that new vaccines and therapeutic drugs are both safe and effective,” said Creech, also associate professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program.
The Vanderbilt study has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services and the Vanderbilt Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU) Cooperative Agreement/Grant numbers 1UM1 AI148452-01 and AI148452-01S3.
The goals of the study are to determine how effective the vaccine is in protecting against COVID-19 and how long the protection lasts. For more information, contact covidvaccine@vumc.org or vaccineresearch@vumc.org
The vaccine was developed by Moderna Inc. in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health.
– Information provided by Vanderbilt University Medical Center