From Oxford to an Italian lab, one race for coronavirus vaccine is gaining backers

From Oxford to an Italian lab, one race for coronavirus vaccine is gaining backers (msn.com)

From Oxford to an Italian lab, one race for coronavirus vaccine is gaining backers

POMEZIA, Italy —On a day in mid-March — as the pandemic began to grip the world — a box from Oxford University arrived at a lab south of Rome. In it, packed with dry ice, were several tiny vials. Each one held a few drops of “seed stock,” a starter kit for the production of a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus. 

The company’s job was to turn a few droplets into an amount large enough for 13,000 people — a sufficient quantity to perform ­large-scale trials unfolding on several continents.

“We could really feel the pressure,” said Francesco Calvaruso, the production manager of Advent, which needed two months to grow, filter and purify a trial vaccine known as AZD1222.  

Read the complete story at msn.com

Submitted by mo2 on Sun, 06/21/2020 - 20:12