Medical trial firm converts East End hotel as Covid19 nasal vaccine study ramps up
An Aim-listed medical trial firm is expanding in east London to free up space for two Covid-19 vaccine trials underway in Whitechapel.
Open Orphan, which pays volunteers to take part in medical trials whereby they’re given both the virus and the treatment, on behalf of universities and pharma companies, has converted the Whitechapel Hotel on New Road into a vaccine trial quarantine site.
The City-fringe expansion will free up space for the company to continue its usual influenza trials, while two Covid-19 vaccine trials take up quarantine beds at its other locations near to Royal London Hospital.
Open Orphan is already handling Phase 1 trials for US pharma Codegenix of a one-time nasal vaccine for Covid-19, which Open Orphan boss Cathal Friel told Morning Wire has “the potential to give you seven years immunity”.
If successful at the Phase 3 trial stage the nasal treatment could be approved under emergency regulation rules “by the year end,” Friel said.
“It can move from Phase 1 to the emergency approval stage very quickly.”
Friel said the expansion announcement, which will nearly double capacity to 43 beds for trial participants, was funded entirely by another client so that their trials could continue separate to Covid-19 related trials.
Good deal
Open Orphan, which has a market capitalisation of around £150m, said the conversion costs of the hotel were also passed on to the client, which were minimal given the hotel was largely vacant, thanks to the lockdown.
“The hotel was vacant due to the pandemic and now we’re using that negative and turning it into a positive by using that space to fight the pandemic”.
The Aim-listed company’s expansion means it is now “the world leader in human challenge trials”, said Frield.
Human challenge trials are less common because trial participants are deliberately infected with a virus, quarantined and then given a treatment to determine efficacy, instead of vaccinating them and then putting them out into the community and monitoring infection rates.
Open Orphan is separately awaiting ethics board approval to commence a second trial for Imperial College London that will test what the smallest amount of virus it takes to cause someone to develop Covid-19.