Apollo Therapeutics, based in Cambridge, completed dosing on 25 August in a 144-person Phase 1 trial of a vaccine against rhinovirus, the family of viruses behind most common colds1. The company reports T-cell responses, meaning white blood cells activating to fight infection, across all three rhinovirus species from a single dose, and no serious adverse events in the first part of the trial.
Vaccine developers have attempted and abandoned a cold vaccine for sixty years for one reason. Rhinovirus comes in many distinct types spread across three species, and an immune response raised against one type has generally done nothing about the rest. A cross-species response from one dose is the claim that decides whether the approach is worth the next stage, and it is precisely what Apollo says it measured.
Two cautions belong alongside it. Immunogenicity data show that the immune system responded, not that anyone caught fewer colds, and the first part of a Phase 1 trial is designed around safety in small numbers rather than efficacy. The readout earns the company its next trial. It does not yet earn a product. Four research funding programmes opened across the base last month, between ARIA, Innovate UK and the national research funder, and none of those calls pays for the larger efficacy trial this result now points towards.
