Before being definitively put on the market and offered to patients, promising vaccines against Covid-19 had to prove their worth among a multitude of candidates. To test the capacities of these candidate vaccines to protect against infection, Inserm launched a call for volunteers on October 1, 2020. This call, launched via the Covireivac platform developed with the support of Public Health France and the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM), had been widely heard since 25,000 people had signed up from the first days and today , 50,000 volunteers participate in vaccine trials.
New trials on the immune response
Even if the vaccination campaign started a few weeks ago “it is imperative to continue testing in order to deepen scientific knowledge, in particular on the duration of protection and the quality of the immune response “underlines Inserm, which manages the platform. This time, the scientists are therefore launching a call for volunteers from people over 75 years old. years, in good health (i.e. without high-risk pathology) having been vaccinated, in order to study the immune response of vaccines in older people.
“We are now looking for people to participate in trials, especially older people to have very detailed data on the immune response, the memory response of older people” said theinfectious disease specialist Odile Launay, member of the Covid-19 vaccine committee, this morning, on RTL’s antenna. Immune response tests affect all age groups, but older volunteers are more difficult to find.
Test the immune response of the Moderna vaccine. A test started in February with volunteers who received the 2 injections of the Moderna vaccine. They will be followed for two years and the results will be compared between each age group in order to test the intensity and duration of the immune response and to decide, if necessary, of the need or not, to carry out booster shots in depending on age and / or immune status. This trial is currently taking place in 6 French centers in Créteil (Henri-Mondor AP-HP hospital), Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Paris (Cochin AP-HP hospital) and Saint-Étienne.
Test the immune response of the Pfizer vaccine. On March 8, another trial on the messenger RNA vaccine developed by Pfizer / BioNTech started in 11 hospitals: Créteil, Nantes, Caen, Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon, Nîmes, Brest, Tours, Strasbourg and Paris (Saint Louis and Cochin). “The objective is to finely assess the immune responses induced by the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in people aged 65 and over, but also to compare those of people who have already contracted Covid-19 to those of people not ‘having never had,’ underlines Inserm.
Also test the immune response of specific patients
Also within the framework of Covireivac, a new trial will also be launched soon to assess the production of antibodies against Covid-19 in 8,650 vaccinated people with pathologies that may affect their immunity: HIV-1, diabetes (type 1 or 2 ), obesity, systemic and autoimmune autoinflammatory disease (vasculitis, lupus erythematosus, etc.), chronic inflammatory rheumatism, multiple sclerosis (or inflammation of the optic nerve), cancer (even without treatment for 2 years), allograft, having had a transplant of a solid organ (lungs, liver, kidneys, heart, pancreas), chronic kidney disease (stage 4 and 5) or hypogammaglobulinemia (low level of immunoglobulins in the blood).
The participants will be followed for 2 years after the last vaccine injection, with the help of the COVIREIVAC centers and 4 complementary centers mobilized for this project. This cohort should also make it possible to identify potential vaccine failures and to study the role of variants in these failures.
What is the Covireivac platform?
In order to assess the vaccines that will make it possible to effectively and sustainably contain the Covid-19 pandemic, France wished to establish a “one-stop-shop“for all candidates. The objective is to bring together a panel of volunteers with varied profiles (but having at least 18 years) in order to measure all the data of the future vaccine. The clinical trials carried out will relate to the most promising vaccines, selected by the scientific committee for vaccines.
“The stage of clinical trials under good conditions is essential for the development of safe and effective vaccines. This provides health authorities with the data essential to guarantee the public the quality of the vaccines that will then be developed. We have today need the mobilization of volunteers by our side “, underlines Odile Launay, professor in infectious and tropical diseases at the University of Paris, and coordinator of Covireivac.
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