Johnson & Johnson’s potential vaccine candidate for coronavirus showed promising results in a small group of Syrian golden hamsters, the company revealed on Thursday, as per a study report published in the journal Nature.

The researchers who carried the experiment vaccinated the hamsters and then exposed them to the virus a month later.

The researchers announced that the hamsters responded to the virus by building antibodies after the vaccination. The vaccinated hamsters lost weight after receiving the vaccine shots. However, they did not experience any adverse reaction to the vaccine, the study revealed.

J&J’s Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said in a press release: “This pre-clinical study further validates our confidence in our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate.”

“With our Phase 3 trials planned to start this month, we remain committed to expanding our manufacturing and distribution capabilities to enable global access to our SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate should it prove to be safe and effective in humans.”

J&J is all set to begin its vaccine trials on humans. The advanced stage trial size will be around 60,000.

Earlier in August, the US Department of Health and Human Services maintained that it had signed a contract with J&J’s pharmaceutical branch to secure 100 million doses of the vaccine worth $1 billion. The contract also gave the government an option to buy an extra 200 million doses if necessary, as per the official announcement.

J&J will follow the random selection of participants for the advanced stage trials. These participants will be examined for over two years.

The results on Thursday follow data published in July that found the J&J vaccine protected non-human primates in a preclinical study.

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