New trial results released by the team behind one of Australian's leading coronavirus vaccine candidates show it is safe and "likely to provide protection" against coronavirus disease.

Scientists from the University of Queensland (UQ) say pre-clinical trials of their vaccine show it triggers the immune system to protect against the disease.

The UQ vaccine, which uses what is known as "molecular clamp" technology, is different to the Oxford University-AstraZeneca chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine which the Federal Government signed a "letter of intent" over last week.

The UQ candidate has been in human trials since early July, and although it is behind the Oxford University candidate in the testing process, it is considered by most experts to be the most promising of the handful of Australian vaccines under development.

The results released on Tuesday night relate to its earlier trial on hamsters.

The UQ team gave doses of the vaccine to the animals and then exposed them to coronavirus to test whether the drug provoked the desired immune response.

Keith Chappell from the UQ School of Chemistry said it was just "one step in the process".

"Following a single dose, we see a really good level of protection against virus in the lung," he said.

"Around half of the animals had no virus at all detected in the lungs and the other half had reduced levels.

"We saw a marked reduction in the severity of the disease in the hamsters."

Dr Chappell said the vaccine was likely to provide protection against both the virus and symptoms of the disease, according to the pre-clinical trial data.

"The protection we saw after a single dose was better than we expected," he said.

"[It] looks like two doses do a great job of protecting both against virus replication and the disease."

His colleague Trent Munro said the double dose was in line with expectations of an effective vaccine.

"Everything we have seen so far gives us continued confidence to keep pushing," he said.

Dr Chappell said the UQ vaccine's phase 1 human trials were going well and there were "absolutely no safety concerns with all the participants dosed so far".

The trial has recruited 120 people, with the last 20 people given a dose this week.

Of the vaccine candidates currently in stage 1 clinical trials, the UQ researchers say they are the first to release detailed results of hamster modelling.

The UQ scientists presented this crucial new data to the International Society of Vaccines overnight.

For the first time, scientists around the world will be able to compare the effectiveness of different vaccines.

"Until now, it has been extremely difficult to compare, but we are the first ones to make public how the vaccine is performing," Dr Chappell said.

As part of the presentation, the UQ team released a 3D model of the coronavirus protein spike in their vaccine.

Currently there are more than 150 COVID-19 vaccines being developed, with several, such as the Oxford University candidate, already used in large-scale human trials.

Scientists are confident the Australian-developed candidate, which has an agreement with Australian vaccine manufacturer CSL, will be able to be mass produced.

The Federal Government does not yet have a formal agreement with UQ, but it is understood Australians would be first in line to receive the vaccine if it was deemed safe and effective.

"With the optimisation that we've done and the proof of concept … this vaccine will be able to be produced at scale," Professor Munro said.

As many as 10 million doses of the vaccine would be able to be produced at a time.

"The headline findings are that we can manufacture this vaccine in sufficient quantities to reach a large percentage of the population," Dr Chappell added.

Researchers said it was too early to say whether people would need an annual vaccine to maintain protection against the virus.

"That data would take time to come in," Professor Munro said.

They found some virus continued to live in the respiratory tract, but was largely wiped out from the lungs of the animals.

"We are confident we are inducing the right type of antibody and t-cell response to best protect against the virus," Dr Chappell said.

Magdalena Plebanski, a professor of immunology at RMIT University, said the development was exciting and showed the UQ team was a potential contender in the race to find an effective and safe vaccine.

What impressed her about the UQ study was that the team was looking to accelerate the process of getting a viable vaccine into the community.

"They are thinking about the next step, about scale-up and production, and they have shown scale-up is possible," Professor Plebanski said.

She also said demonstrating hamsters could be used as animal models was an exciting new development.

Professor Plebanski said the researchers had shown the pathology in the hamster lungs was similar to that in human patients, and the animals could be used to test new interventions and vaccines.

"It looks promising. Thus far, all the signs are good," she said.

"As to which is going to offer the best protection, it's still too early to know."

Researchers at the University of Queensland say its COVID-19 vaccine candidate provokes the desired immune response in hamsters.

Australian coronavirus jab shows likely protection