COM-COV STUDY TO EVALUATE COMBINATION OF COVID-19 VACCINES

The University of Oxford has announced that it will perform the first clinical trial designed to evaluate the effectiveness of different combinations of vaccines against COVID-19.

The study, designated “Com-COV,” will be led by research professor Matthew Snape and will recruit 820 volunteers above the age of fifty in the United Kingdom. Four different vaccination combinations will be tested, including both two doses of the same vaccine and doses of two different vaccines, in different orders and with different time spans between the doses.

The vaccines to be tested will be the one developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), which is a weakened version of the adenovirus, genetically modified to produce the SARS-CoV-2 protein called the Spike (S) glycoprotein, and so provoke an immune response. The other vaccine will be the one developed by Pfizer/BioNTech (BNT162b2), a new type of messenger RNA vaccine, which is also able to produce the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein.

If combining vaccines proves both safe and effective, it will make for much faster immunization, and the varying availability of vaccines from different pharmaceutical companies will not necessarily limit the process.

Source: University of Oxford, “Comparing COVID-19 Vaccine Schedule Combinations – Com-COV”: <https:// comcovstudy.org.uk/about>.