Vaccinologists have been struggling to find candidates for testing new vaccines since corona, says Professor Isabel Leroux-Roels (UGent). And that while twice as many people are being contacted as before the pandemic.
Thibaut Renson
“I had hoped that the doubling of our candidate base through the corona vaccine studies would make it just easier to find participants, but the opposite is true.” Vaccinology professor Isabel Leroux-Roels (UZ Gent) notes that she and her fellow vaccinologists have hardly found any candidates for testing new vaccines since the corona pandemic.
“We received thousands of applications for the corona vaccine studies,” says Leroux-Roels. “Maybe also because participants hoped that the study would protect them faster than anyone else. Now that we have to look for participants for other vaccine studies, we can write to them too. And yet we can’t get enough candidates.”
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Effects
Leroux-Roels knows that there are many misconceptions about participating in clinical trials, that people have the wildest ideas about it, and think that they are exposed to great risks as ‘guinea pigs’. But corona made the search for participants even more difficult. “Even colleagues who are not involved in the development of vaccines, but ordinary drugs, notice the effect.”
“Probably it has to do with a tiredness around everything that has to do with the medical, and an even stronger one.” vaccination fatigue”, says Leroux-Roels. “People have been vaccinated en masse to regain their freedom. Now they want to take advantage of that. Many have also suffered from flu-like symptoms from the vaccine. But people need to know that the risk of side effects, and the type of side effects, varies from study to study, and from vaccine to vaccine. The corona vaccines were very powerful in terms of side effects. But that is certainly not the case for every vaccine.”
Own sake
The difficult search for candidates comes at a time when a lot of research is being resumed after it was forced to pause due to corona. “Our team is among the best in the world, but we simply cannot do our job without enough participants. People need to understand that without these studies, there are no new vaccines or drugs. So the importance cannot be underestimated. Unlike the corona vaccine studies, you often have no direct self-interest in it, but you can mean a lot to others.”
In the development of a vaccine against genital herpes, the Leroux-Roels team is currently looking for young people (18-40 years old), without herpes. More information on www.cevac.be.