World’s largest and most broadly-based healthcare company Johnson & Johnson launched a new large-scale late-stage trial on Monday to test a two-dose regimen of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine. The company evaluates potential incremental benefits for the duration of protection with a second dose. The US drug conglomerate plans to enrol up to 30,000 participants for the study and run it in parallel with a one-dose trial with as many as 60,000 volunteers that began in September.

The UK arm of the study is aiming to recruit 6,000 participants and the rest will join from other countries with a high incidence of COVID-19 cases such as the United States, Belgium, Colombia, France, Germany, the Philippines, South Africa and Spain, it said.

They will be given a first dose of either a placebo or the experimental shot, currently called Ad26COV2, followed by a second dose or placebo 57 days later, said Saul Faust, a professor of paediatric immunology and infectious diseases who is co-leading the trial at University Hospital Southampton.

Johnson & Johnson said in a statement that the study will assess the effectiveness of the investigational vaccine after both the first and second dose to evaluate protection against the virus and potential incremental benefits for the duration of protection with a second dose.

The platform, called AdVac, is also used in an Ebola vaccine that was approved earlier this year. "It's really important that we pursue trials of many different vaccines from many different manufacturers and be able then to ensure the supply both to the UK and global population," Faust told reporters at a briefing.

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