Vaccines are an essential countermeasure needed to control  the global COVID-19 pandemic. The study by van Doremalen et al. (posted in bioRχiv) shares data demonstrating that the adenovirus-vectored vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, encoding the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, is immunogenic in mice and rhesus macaques. Six rhesus macaques were vaccinated intramuscularly with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. Virus-specific neutralising antibodies were detectable before challenge in all vaccinated but not control animals. Following SARS-CoV-2 challenge, vaccinated rhesus macaques had a reduced viral load compared with control animals (n=3), and no pneumonia. The authors report that ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is under investigation in a phase I clinical trial.

Read the full article in bioRχiv doi:10.1101/2020.05.13.093195