Vaccine trial

A vaccine trial is a clinical trial that aims at establishing the safety and efficacy of a vaccine prior to it being licensed.

A vaccine candidate drug is first identified through preclinical evaluations that could involve high throughput screening and selecting the proper antigen to invoke an immune response. The preclinical stages are also necessary to determine approximate dose ranges and proper drug formulations (i.e., tablet, injection etc…) This is also the stage in which the drug candidate may be first tested in laboratory animals prior to moving to the phase one trials. Vaccines such as the oral polio vaccine have been first tested for adverse effects and immunogenicity in monkeys as well as non-human primates. Recent scientific advances have helped to use transgenic animals as a part of vaccine preclinical protocol in hopes to more accurately determine drug reactions in humans. Understanding vaccine safety and the immunological response to the drug, such as toxicity, are necessary components of the preclinical stage. Other drug trials focus on the pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics; however, in vaccine studies it is essential to understand toxic effects at all possible dosage levels and the interactions with the immune system.

The following stage in vaccine trials is the phase one study, which consists of introducing the drug into the human population.

A vaccine trial might involve forming two groups from the target population. For example, from the set of trial subjects, each subject may be randomly assigned to receive either a new vaccine or a "control" treatment: The control treatment may be a placebo, or an adjuvant-containing cocktail, or an established vaccine (which might be intended to protect against a different pathogen).

After the administration of the vaccine or placebo, the researchers collect data on antibody production, on health outcomes (such as illness due to the targeted infection or to another infection). This data is summarized as a statistic, which is used to estimate the protective efficacy of the vaccine. Then, following the , the specified statistical test is performed to gauge the statistically significant of the observed differences in the outcomes between the treatment and control groups.

...
Wikipedia