¶ CanSino Biologics
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CanSino Biologics, or CanSinoBIO, is a Chinese biotechnology company based in Tianjin, China.
¶ History
On May 12, 2020, the National Research Council Canada announced it would collaborate with CanSinoBIO to advance the latter's COVID-19 vaccine candidate called Ad5-nCoV.[1] Lakshmi Krishnan, director general of the NRC's Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, said at the time that the trials in Canada would complement and expand on what had been done in China.[2] Testing on healthy human volunteers was to take place at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology (CCfV).
In August 2020, the collaboration fell apart amid rising tensions between the two countries.[3] According to the NRC, CanSino's state funding agencies (the Beijing Institute of Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China) had made changes to the collaboration agreement and had not authorized the shipment of vaccines to Canada. Scott Halperin, director of the Canadian Center for Vaccinology, later described the attempted partnership as “a waste of a lot of time.”[4]
¶ Clinical trials
A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Phase II Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of the Recombinant Novel Coronavirus Vaccine (Adenovirus Vector) in Healthy Adults Aged Above 18 Years
This is a phase II, randomised, double-blinded and placebo-controlled clinical trial in healthy adults above 18 years of age. This clinical trial is designed to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of Ad5-nCoV which encodes for a full-length spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2.[5]
The study is being run by Fengcai Zhu at the Jiangsu Province Centers of Disease Control and Prevention with the Institute of Biotechnology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, People's Liberation Army in the People's Republic of China, in partnership with CanSino Biologics Inc. and Zhongnan Hospital.[6]
The Lancet published results in August 2020 in a paper titled “Immunogenicity and safety of a recombinant adenovirus type-5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine in healthy adults aged 18 years or older: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial.”[7]
¶ External links
National Research Council Canada. (2020, May 12). The National Research Council of Canada and CanSino Biologics Inc. announce collaboration to advance vaccine against COVID-19. Government of Canada. http://archive.today/2020.05.17-214907/https://www.canada.ca/en/national-research-council/news/2020/05/the-national-research-council-of-canada-and-cansino-biologics-inc-announce-collaboration-to-advance-vaccine-against-covid-19.html ↩︎
Zafar, A. (2020, May 12). Canadians to help develop, test potential COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese company. CBC News. http://archive.today/2020.05.14-101734/https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaccine-cansino-1.5566216 ↩︎
Cooke, A. (2020, August 26). Canadian COVID-19 clinical trial scrapped after China wouldn’t ship potential vaccine. CBC News. http://archive.today/2020.08.28-161607/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/canada-china-covid-19-vaccine-trial-plug-pulled-1.5701101 ↩︎
Pinkerton, C. (2021, March 12). “A waste of a lot of time”: Researcher in CanSino deal shares new details. iPolitics. https://web.archive.org/web/20220712033648/https://ipolitics.ca/news/a-waste-of-a-lot-of-time-researcher-in-cansino-deal-shares-new-details ↩︎
A Phase II Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Recombinant Vaccine for COVID-19 (Adenovirus Vector) | Expanded Access Navigator. Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://navigator.reaganudall.org/clinical-trial/phase-ii-clinical-trial-evaluate-recombinant-vaccine-covid-19-adenovirus-vector ↩︎
People's Liberation Army of China, CanSino Biologics Inc., Jiangsu Province Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, & Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, May 18). A Phase II Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Recombinant Vaccine for COVID-19 (Adenovirus Vector). ClinicalTrials.gov. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04341389 ↩︎
Zhu, F.-C., Guan, X.-H., Li, Y.-H., Huang, J.-Y., Jiang, T., Hou, L.-H., Li, J.-X., Yang, B.-F., Wang, L., Wang, W.-J., Wu, S.-P., Wang, Z., Wu, X.-H., Xu, J.-J., Zhang, Z., Jia, S.-Y., Wang, B.-S., Hu, Y., Liu, J.-J., & Zhang, J. (2020). Immunogenicity and safety of a recombinant adenovirus type-5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine in healthy adults aged 18 years or older: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial. The Lancet, 396(10249), 479–488. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31605-6 ↩︎