Trial vaccine developed by Oxford and made in Italy gains backers
In it, packed with dry ice, were several tiny vials. Each one held a few drops of “seed stock,” a starter kit for the production of a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
The company’s job was to turn a few droplets into an amount large enough for 13,000 people — a sufficient quantity to perform large-scale trials unfolding on several continents.
“We could really feel the pressure,” said Francesco Calvaruso, the production manager of Advent, which needed two months to grow, filter and purify a trial vaccine known as AZD1222.
