SBU Hospital To Be Site Of Novavax's Coronavirus Vaccine Trial

STONY BROOK, NY — Stony Brook University Hospital is the only site on Long Island selected by Novavax to participate in its Phase Three clinical trial of a potential coronavirus vaccine, Stony Brook University announced earlier in the week. Only one other site in New York state was selected.

Volunteers are being asked to step up, as participants will be enrolled over the course of six to eight weeks. The trial will measure whether the vaccine candidate can protect against COVID-19 infection, as well as its ability to reduce the disease's severity.

The Novavax clinical trial will recruit up to 30,000 participants at approximately 110 sites across the United States. Stony Brook Medicine's trial is hoping to garner 500 participants.

To learn more about who is eligible to participate in the trial and how it will work, you can visit the Renaissance School of Medicine website.

If you are interested in joining the hospital's COVID-19 volunteer screening registry, you are asked to take the survey.

"In order to bring rapid public vaccination programs to both the U.S. and other countries of the world, we need several effective COVID-19 vaccines," Benjamin Luft, principal investigator and professor at the university's Renaissance School of Medicine, said via news release. "We all want to see economies reopen, schools resume in person, travel restrictions lifted and the ability to gather with the people who matter to us."

Stony Brook Medicine wrote it was chosen as a trial center partly because of its expertise in infectious disease research — including vaccinology — and for its ability to perform clinical trials in people with complex medical conditions. Stony Brook was also selected for its strong relationships with the first responder and essential worker community, and for its ability to bring vaccine trial opportunities to underrepresented populations who are at higher risk for infection.

"Our researchers are an important part of the national scientific response to finding an ‘exit strategy’ to curb this terrible pandemic — by contributing on a local and global scale with research grounded in early detection, monitoring, efficacy of new and existing treatments, and, ultimately, effective vaccines to prevent future outbreaks," said Kenneth Kaushansky, senior vice president of Health Sciences and dean of the Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine.

This article originally appeared on the Three Village Patch