StemCell Therapy

Scientists, drugmakers and governments are moving with unprecedented speed to deliver a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus.

The fastest of them have already delivered preliminary data from human studies, and further results from others should come quickly as the year progresses.

The goal, at least in the U.S., is to have a vaccine ready for use in some fashion by the end of the year, or early next. Doing so would be a scientific feat with few parallels. No vaccine has ever been developed so quickly, never mind manufactured for the world.

Use the buttons below to highlight events in each company's timeline. Solid dots indicate events which have occurred, while striped bars indicate company estimates for when an event will occur. Current projections assume clinical development succeeds and progresses on time, neither of which are certain to happen.

Use the dropdown to highlight events in each company's timeline. Solid dots indicate events which have occurred, while striped bars indicate company estimates for when an event will occur.

First volunteer given vaccine

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Nami Sumida/BioPharma Dive

Researchers' success or failure could determine whether the virus becomes endemic, recurring in countries around the world year after year, or is ultimately checked.

With the health of their citizens at stake, governments are investing enormous sums of money into vaccine research and development, and to prepare for manufacturing and distributing what will likely need to be hundreds of millions of doses necessary to keep infection at bay.

With modern-day Manhattan Projects underway, vaccines have become an issue of national security, raising questions of global equity and medicine access.

In the U.S., the Trump administration has unveiled "Operation Warp Speed," pledging billions of dollars of funding and support for an initial, and as yet unconfirmed, slate of candidates.

There's no guarantee the first successful vaccine will come from the U.S., however. Some of the leading candidates are being developed overseas, with projects by China's CanSino Biologics and the University of Oxford in the U.K. the furthest along.

The rest of the world might not be so lucky.

As Emory University vaccines expert Walter Orenstein said in an interview with BioPharma Dive, "It's not like we can expect 7 billion doses the day after licensure so we can vaccinate the whole world." Yet, to truly curb circulation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in humans, getting vaccines to nations wealthy and poor will be a vital mission.

For scientists, many questions remain unanswered.

The first trials to produce data have avoided any safety issues that can sideline a project for good, and have established they can stimulate an immune response. But what about less common side effects only detectable in massive trials? How good will vaccines be at preventing actual infections?

The next six to nine months should produce a flurry of data, early answers and fresh questions, making it difficult to keep track. Here's where things stand for nine of the most advanced, most promising, or best funded vaccine candidates in the pipeline.

Read the rest here:
The coronavirus vaccine frontrunners have emerged. Here's where they stand - BioPharma Dive

This entry was posted on June 12, 2020 at 3:45 am and is filed under Legal Issues Genetic Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |