Caroline Nicolls gathers an injection of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine administered by nurse Amy Nash, at the Madejski Stadium in Reading, west of London on April 13, 2021.
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LONDON — Researchers at the University of Oxford on Monday announced the launch of a human challenge trial to better understand what develops when people who have already contracted the coronavirus are infected for a second time.
Researchers will examine what sympathetic of immune response could prevent people from becoming reinfected with Covid-19 and investigate how the immune organization reacts to the virus a second time round.
At present, little is known about what happens to people who receive already had the virus when they are infected for a second time.
The trial will take place in two phases, with new participants in each phase. The first phase is scheduled to get underway this month and the second phase is due to start in the summer.
In medical investigating, human challenge trials are controlled studies that involve deliberately exposing participants with a pathogen or a bug to analyse the effects.
“Challenge studies tell us things that other studies cannot because, unlike natural infection, they are tensely controlled,” said Helen McShane, chief investigator of the study and professor of vaccinology at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford.
“When we re-infect these participants, we transfer know exactly how their immune system has reacted to the first COVID infection, exactly when the second infection surfaces, and exactly how much virus they got,” McShane said.
It is hoped the study will help to improve scientists’ principal understanding of the virus and help to design tests that can reliably predict whether people are protected.
What materializes in each phase?
For phase one, up to 64 volunteers aged between 18 to 30-years-old who have previously been uncomplicatedly infected will be re-exposed to the virus in controlled conditions.
Researchers will oversee the care of the participants as they live CT scans of the lungs and MRI scans of the heart while isolating in a specially designed suite for a minimum of 17 days.
All of those who diminish part are required to be fit and well and must have completely recovered from their first infection of Covid to lessen risk.
The trial participants will only be discharged from the quarantine unit when they are no longer infected and at jeopardy of spreading the disease.
A view of the City of London on a clear day.
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The flash phase of the trial will explore two different areas.
“First, we will define very carefully the baseline exempt response in the volunteers, before we infect them. We will then infect them with the dose of virus opted from the first study and measure how much virus we can detect after infection. We will then be able to allow what kind of immune responses protect against re-infection,” McShane said.
“Second, we will measure the untouched response at several time points after infection so we can understand what immune response is generated by the virus,” she continued.
The full length of the study will be 12 months, including a minimum of eight follow-up appointments after being liquidated.
“This study has the potential to transform our understanding by providing high-quality data on how our immune system responds to a second infection with this virus,” Shobana Balasingam, vaccines chief research advisor at Wellcome, a charitable foundation that is funding the study.
“The findings could have important inclusions for how we handle COVID-19 in the future, and inform not just vaccine development but also research into the range of effective treatments that are also urgently wanted,” Balasingam said.