Open Orphan’s shares rose on Thursday after the prestigious Nature scientific journal published peer-reviewed research on the clinical trials company’s study of deliberately infecting people with Covid, showing that the model was safe in healthy young adults.
The peer-reviewed results in Nature back up initial findings last month that the world’s first human challenge Covid trial was safe, paving the way for the model to be used for future studies to test new vaccines and medicines against strains of the virus.Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhoid and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.
Open Orphan avoided signing commercial Covid-19 challenge study contracts until the model was proven to be safe and the results of the study were published.