Rutgers Recruiting Participants for Johnson & Johnson Phase 3 COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trial

Rutgers will enroll as many as 2,000 participants from the university community and throughout New Jersey

Rutgers University is a clinical trial site for the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson’s phase 3 clinical research study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Janssen’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Rutgers will enroll as many as 2,000 participants from the university community and throughout New Jersey. Study participants who meet the eligibility requirements for the study will be randomly selected to receive a single dose of the potential vaccine or a placebo. Researchers will track whether those who are vaccinated have lower rates of infection with moderate to severe symptoms than those who were unvaccinated.

“Rutgers is committed to fighting the greatest public health challenge of this century,” said co-lead investigator Jeffrey Carson, a provost at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “Our research team will enroll a large number of volunteers into this extremely important vaccine trial. We will be offering participation to people who have enrolled in our prior COVID-19 studies with health care workers and Rutgers faculty, staff and alumni. We have no doubt that the Rutgers University community will rise to the challenge.”

This is the second phase 3 vaccine trial being conducted at Rutgers.

“It’s critical to have diverse participants in a coronavirus vaccine trial so we know it is effective for populations that are often underrepresented in research,” said XinQi Dong, director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and co-lead investigator who is directing community recruitment for the Johnson & Johnson trial. “Rutgers and the Institute for Health have strong community partnerships and existing relationships that will help us engage and enroll participants from minority communities who have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic.”

People interested in volunteering to be considered for the vaccine clinical trial and other COVID-related research can click here or email or rutgers-covid-trials@rwjms.rutgers.edu.

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