14/09/2020 (Agence Europe) – The pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca announced on Saturday 12 September that it had received the green light from the British regulatory authority to resume clinical trials on the candidate vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford. Three days earlier, the group had announced the interruption of these tests following the unexplained illness of one of the participants (see EUROPE 12556/7). The independent committee set up to look into the case “has concluded its investigations and recommended to the MHRA (the UK medicines regulatory authority) that trials in the UK are safe to resume”, AstraZeneca said. At a press conference on Thursday 10 September, the group’s chief executive officer, Pascal Soriot, said that it is still possible to obtain “a vaccine by the end of the year” or “early next year”. (SPj)