CU, UCHealth recruiting trial participants for Novavax vaccine candidate

DENVER — The University of Colorado and UCHealth are recruiting potential candidates for a COVID-19 vaccine Phase III trial for NVX-CoV2373.

NovaVax’s vaccine candidate uses deactivated pieces of the COVID-19 protein and an immune system booster to build immunity. The currently-approved vaccines from Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Moderna Inc. (Nasdaq: MDNA) use messenger RNA to produce spike proteins of the virus within a patient’s cells, which are then identified by the immune system and destroyed. Those same immune system cells are then able to identify and kill future COVID-19 viruses that reach the inoculated patient.

“This pivotal phase 3 clinical trial in the United States and Mexico is critical to building on the encouraging safety and immunogenicity data we’ve generated to-date and ultimately demonstrating how well NVX-CoV2373 works to prevent COVID-19,” Novavax president Dr. Gregory Glenn said in a prepared statement.

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UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital is the only hospital in the state involved in the trial, according to a UCHealth news release. The health system is continuing to participate in Phase III trials for the vaccine candidate jointly produced by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC (Nasdaq: AZN).

The study will monitor patients, who are invited from across Colorado to apply to participate, for two years. Anyone interested in participating can also send an email to suzanne.fiorillo@cuanschutz.edu.

Multiple companies are continuing to advance COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators across the world. The vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were approved last year and are rolling out across the country at varying pace.

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