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“#Frontrunners in race for COVID-19 vaccine<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Dozens of companies, from biotech start-ups to Big Pharma, are in the race to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, both to meet urgent medical need and for the potential payday.\n <\/p>\n

A US-German collaboration between Pfizer and BioNTech surged past a key milestone on Wednesday with Britain’s announcement that it would begin rolling out its vaccine\u2014the first Western country to give the green light to an immunisation drive against the coronavirus. <\/p>\n

Its drug is one of several candidate vaccines that have shown promising results in final stage clinical trials, raising hopes the a pandemic that has already killed nearly 1.5 million people worldwide can be tamed.<\/p>\n

How many in the pipeline?<\/b><\/p>\n

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified 49 “candidate vaccines” at the stage of clinical trials in humans by mid-November, up from 11 in mid-June.<\/p>\n

Thirteen of them are at the most advanced “Phase 3” stage, in which a vaccine’s effectiveness is tested on a large scale, general<\/a>ly on tens of thousands of people across several continents.<\/p>\n

Two frontrunner vaccines\u2014by Moderna and BioNTech\/Pfizer\u2014have already sought emergency use app<\/a>roval on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Pfizer and BioNTech have reported that phase 3 trials for their mRNA vaccine showed 95 percent efficacy in preventing COVID-19 symptoms and did not produce adverse side effects among thousands of volunteers.<\/p>\n

Britain said on Wednesday that its National Health Service will begin with 800,000 doses “early next week” and ramp up to “millions” of inoculations by the end of the year. <\/p>\n

BioNTech\/Pfizer, which said they expect further regulatory decisions for other countries in the “coming days and weeks”, expect to roll out 1.3 billion doses by the end of next year.<\/p>\n

US biotech firm Moderna has also said its vaccine showed almost 95 percent efficacy.<\/p>\n

The company is on track to manufacture between 500 million to a billion doses globally in 2021, it said.<\/p>\n

Results from a European project led by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca were more complicated. <\/p>\n

Across two variants in the trials with slightly different protocols, the two-dose vaccine worked 70 percent of the time.
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But in a part of the trial process that came about by mistake, a group whose first jab was a half-dose rather than a full one showed an efficacy rate of 90 percent. <\/p>\n

In terms of logistics AstraZeneca has an advantage because its candidate can be stored at the temperature of a normal fridge. <\/p>\n

Moderna’s vaccine on the other hand must be kept at -20 degrees Celsius, while Pfizer’s requires an even chillier -70C to remain viable. <\/p>\n

Russia, which registered two COVID-19 vaccines before trials finished, has said that its Sputnik V vaccine is 95 percent effective according to preliminary data and can be stored in an ordinary fridge. <\/p>\n

The country has started a mass vaccination programme of its military personnel.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, several state-run Chinese labs are also thought to have produced some of the more promising candidate vaccines.<\/p>\n

China has been giving experimental COVID-19 vaccines to people including state employees and essential workers heading abroad since July.<\/p>\n

The United States and Europe this week fleshed out plans to administer COVID-19 vaccines as soon as they gain approval, expected in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

What kind of vaccines?<\/b><\/p>\n

Some methods for making a vaccine are tried-and-tested, while others remain experimental.<\/p>\n

Inactivated traditional vaccines use a virus germ that has been killed, while others use a weakened or “attenuated” strain.<\/p>\n

These vaccines work when the body treats the deactivated pathogen as if it were a real threat, producing antibodies to kill it without endangering the patient with full infection.<\/p>\n

So-called “sub-unit” vaccines contain a fragment of the virus or bacteria they are derived from to produce a similar immune response.<\/p>\n

“Viral vector” varieties deliver fragments of viral DNA into cells, often hitching a lift from other virus molecules.<\/p>\n

For example, a measles virus modified with a coronavirus protein\u2014the apparatus SARS-CoV-2 uses to latch on to human cells\u2014can by deployed to provide immunity to COVID-19. <\/p>\n

Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are based on cutting-edge technology<\/a> that uses synthetic versions of molecules called messenger RNA to hack into human cells, and effectively turn them into vaccine-making factories.<\/p>\n

Safety first<\/b><\/p>\n

Trials of two candidate vaccines\u2014made by Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly\u2014were “paused” in October over safety concerns.<\/p>\n

But that was not necessarily bad news<\/a>, Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said at the time.<\/p>\n

“The fact that trials are paused should indicate that there should be confidence that the whole process of monitoring the safety of trial participants is working well,” he said.<\/p>\n

Cases in which recovered COVID patients were infected a second time with a new strain also raise the question of how long vaccines’ protection might last.<\/p>\n

In October, the US FDA said it would need to see two months of follow-up data after vaccination before giving emergency authorisation for any vaccine use. <\/p>\n

“What is different for COVID-19 vaccines is that speed of development and potential approval is much faster due to the public health emergency,” noted the European Medicines Agency (EMA).<\/p>\n

But even that pressing need cannot overcome the rules.<\/p>\n

“Before approval, all vaccines in the European Union are evaluated against the same high standards as any other medicine,” the EMA said in a statement.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2020 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Frontrunners in race for COVID-19 vaccine (2020, December 2)
\n retrieved 2 December 2020
\n from https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2020-12-frontrunners-covid-vaccine.html<\/p>\n

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