Huntsville Hospital Vaccine

Local companies working to develop vaccine

Evening.

This morning as certain parts of alabama's economy prepare to restart -- here locally, work is under way to treat those infected with coronavirus.

Waay31s sierra phillips is live at huntsville hospital where they are working on a new study with hudson alpha.

How long could a treatment take to develop?

Researchers we spoke with say even though finding a vaccine may be a year or more away, they're working on a treatment that could be ready much sooner.

We spoke with a doctor from irepertoire.

It's a company on the hudson alpha campus specializing in immune sequencing technologies.

Right now, they're partnering with huntsville hospital to test the blood of coronavirus patients a week after diagnosis and then a few weeks later.

The idea is to find out how our immune systems fight the virus so a treatment can be developed.

But the group isn't alone which means different treatments could be coming.

There are other companies that that we know, chinese, japanese, european companies, working with a similar approach.

So i think that fighting covid-19 may be, before a vaccine becomes available, there are going to be different options to treating the disease.

In the next couple of months, huntsville hospital will help recruit 15 to 30 patients for the trial and take the blood samples as well.

Reporting live in huntsville sierra phillips waay31 news.