Australians to receive potential coronavirus vaccine in southern hemisphere's first human trials

Phase one results from the trial are expected at the end of July.

Australia's first human trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine have begun in Melbourne, with about 130 people involved in the program.

Clinical research organisation Nucleus Network will be in charge of the early stages of testing the vaccine NVX-CoV2373, before the trial expands to Brisbane within a week.

The participants are healthy people between 18 and 59 years old.

Infectious diseases physician and microbiologist Paul Griffin said the trial was "the first critical step" to creating a potential safe vaccine against COVID-19.

Victoria's Parliamentary Secretary for Medical Research, Frank McGuire, said the trial was a significant step forward in the race for a coronavirus vaccine.

"As the first human trial in the southern hemisphere, and one of only a handful of COVID-19 human trials worldwide, I am delighted Victoria is again at the forefront in leadership and excellence in medical research," he said in a statement.

The treatment is being developed by US biotech company Novavax and is aimed at enhancing the immune response and stimulating high levels of neutralising antibodies.

Joining a press conference in Melbourne from Maryland in the United States, Novavax chief scientific officer Gregory Glenn said the company started working on a vaccine in January when the outbreak began in China.

"Vaccines are miracles and have a great way of protecting populations against these severe diseases and I'm very optimistic this can be done here," Dr Glenn said.

The vaccine being tested in Melbourne was chosen out of a pool of 30 potential vaccines, he said.

'This trial is going to move very fast'

Dr Glenn said phase one results were expected by the end of July, and phase two by the end of the year.

"This trial is going to move very fast. We hope to have some conclusive results by the end of this year by which time governments may have elected to deploy the vaccine," he said.

"Everything is very accelerated, vaccines can take eight to 10 years to develop.

"Obviously we need a vaccine so we're trying to compress everything."

Dr Glenn said vaccine availability was a "very complex issue" but said the company was "committed to global access", which was why phase two trials would take place with thousands of volunteers in different countries.

He said the company could make at least 100 million doses by the end of the year and 1.5 billion next year.

Microbiologist Paul Griffin said volunteers were still needed and anyone interested was encouraged to sign up.

He stressed no live coronavirus was used in the trial.

"The vaccine does not contain any live virus and there's no challenge element — we're not exposing these people to any virus," he said.

"We've had a lot of interest, we still need a few more but we've had a great response."

Novavax received $US388 million ($593 million) from the Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to advance the potential vaccine through phase two clinical trials.

There are more than 100 coronavirus vaccines in the pipeline, and almost a dozen that have made it to human trials.