Gaithersburg’s Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) reported Tuesday positive phase 1 clinical trial data on its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, a necessary step to advance a product officials hope will eventually protect people from coronavirus.

The study found the candidate, called NVX-CoV2373, to both be generally well-tolerated and elicit “robust antibody responses,” the company said Tuesday, adding that it showed the potential to reduce the disease’s transmission.

Specifically, the candidate had a “reassuring” safety profile with the most common tenderness and pain at the injection site, and less frequent, systemic symptoms including headache, fatigue and myalgia. And there were no “severe” adverse reactions, the company said.

The data demonstrate the candidate has “a robust immunogenicity profile,” said Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development for Novavax, in a statement. In addition, he said, it “elicited neutralizing antibody titers greater than those…