U.K. scientists are growing the Covid-19 Delta variant in a laboratory and hope to use it to infect volunteers, marking a new phase in the only studies intentionally exposing participants to the virus
Covid-19 Delta variant,
British researchers are making progress growing a carefully controlled batch in a lab that they hope to use to infect volunteers in studies. The effort marks a new phase in the U.K.’s human challenge trials, the only Covid-19 studies in the world intentionally exposing participants to the virus with the goal of developing new vaccines and treatments. Other researchers are also isolating and growing Covid variant specimens for study. U.S. government-funded scientists are producing variants for research, but not for use in humans, a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official said.
Two Covid challenge trials sponsored by Imperial College London and the University of Oxford started earlier this year in the U.K. They so far have exposed more than 40 healthy, young volunteers under isolated medical supervision to theSince then, the highly transmissible Delta variant has come to dominate infections globally, rendering vaccines less effective and boosting case numbers across the U.K., U.S. and elsewhere. Delta’s fast rise led researchers and U.K.
With colleagues in the Netherlands, hVivo has coaxed the Delta strain to mature through the seed stage, said Andrew Catchpole, hVivo’s chief scientific officer and a virologist, who oversees the virus manufacturing. The London clinical-research firm is continuing to grow the batch milliliter by milliliter from a specimen taken from an infected human.
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