An Orange County hospital has launched phase 1 of the only California-specific effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach is the only hospital conducting this clinical trial, according to Dr. Philip Robinson.
"Hoag Hospital was the first hospital in California to care for the first California COVID patient back in January," Robinson, who serves as the Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiology, says.
The vaccine is jointly developed by ImmunityBio and NantKwest.
"Our vaccine candidate, hdA5-COVID-19, targets both the nucleocapsid protein on the interior of the virus particle and the spike protein on the virus' surface," said Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, Chairman and CEO of ImmunityBio and NantKwest. "We believe this dual targeting is a key advantage that may lead to the stimulation of both T-cell-mediated and antibody-mediated immunity to SARS-CoV-2, which is an important differentiator from other vaccine candidates that only target the spike protein."
A press release from ImmunityBio and NantKwest stated "The Phase 1 trial, which is being conducted at the Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, California, is currently enrolling healthy adult subjects up to age 55 with the goal of examining the safety and reactogenicity of two doses of the vaccine candidate."
Robinson is a doctor and investigator at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.
The hospital has 35 volunteers who are part of its phase 1 trial.
"Phase 2 will b several hundred patients," Robinson says. He says "phase 3 will be 30,000 patients between 18 and 55 years of age, a non-smoker and relatively healthy."
Phase 1 starts next week and phases 2 and 3 start next year.
