British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc said Thursday it will start commercial supply in September of an experimental adenovirus vaccine it is jointly developing with the University of Oxford for the treatment of coronavirus.

The company will supply at least 400 million doses of the vaccine called AZD1222 and has secured a capacity to manufacture 1 billion doses.

Of the initial supply, 300 million doses will be delivered to the United States as early as October under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. AstraZeneca said it is aiming for further agreements to ensure global access to the vaccine.

Early stage clinical trials for AZD1222 began in April with over 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55, according to AstraZeneca. If results, expected shortly, are positive, it plans late-stage trials "in a number of countries."

"AstraZeneca recognizes that the vaccine may not work but is committed to progressing the clinical program with speed and scaling up manufacturing at risk," the company said in a statement.

For the United States, AstraZeneca said it had received more than $1 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services' office dealing with medical emergencies to develop and produce the vaccine.

The funding will cover a late-stage clinical trial with 30,000 participants and a pediatric trial, it said.

According to data released by the World Health Organization on May 15, eight novel coronavirus vaccine candidates are in clinical trials and 110 potential vaccines are in preclinical evaluation.

==Kyodo

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