The study will go international, particularly to Latin America, to recruit elderly volunteers.
The company plans to remedy that by focusing on enrolling volunteers outside the US and Canada for the late-stage study. While the list of countries has not been disclosed, Ward told Insider that the study would recruit in a handful of Latin American countries, the UK, and some Eastern European nations. The study aims to recruit more than 30,000 volunteers, randomizing them to either get two doses of its vaccine candidate or two sham injections of a placebo.
The company has already started mass-producing the vaccine before knowing whether or not it works. Medicago's former CEO Bruce Clark, who was replaced in December, previously estimated to Insider that the company could produce up to 100 million doses in 2021. Ward said he now expects to produce somewhere between 55 million and 75 million doses in 2021.Medicago's vaccines are made out of tobacco-like plantsis unusual.