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The largest American pharmaceutical company has made progress in the work on the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus vaccine. Human testing will begin in September, and it will be available for sale in early 2021. Who else is close to making a vaccine?
We have a potential vaccine that is «likely to be effective against the coronavirus. We have opportunities to increase its production in a relatively short time »- Johnson & Johnson boss Alex Gorsky said in an interview for NBC. The pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson has been working on the vaccine since January 2020. The company expects human clinical trials to be initiated by September at the latest, clinical data on safety and efficacy will be available by the end of 2020, and the first batches of the COVID-19 vaccine will hit the market at the beginning of 2021.
By comparison, a typical vaccine development process, involving a number of different research steps, takes 5 to 7 years. In the case of the coronavirus vaccine, activities – carried out by many independent companies and research centers around the world – are progressing at record pace.
By the end of 2021, over a billion doses?
Johnson & Johnson and BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority), which cooperates with the US Department of Health and Human Services, allocated over a billion dollars in total to this investment. They are also to put up additional funds that will allow the ongoing work to be extended to the purpose identifying potential antiviral therapies effective in treating infections caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
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Johnson & Johnson is expanding the company’s global production capacity to deliver over a billion doses of the vaccine to countries around the world by the end of 2021. It uses the same technologies that have been proven in the production of the Ebola vaccine and other vaccines that are still in the final stages of clinical trials (against Zika viruses, RSV and HIV).
A vaccine against coronavirus and COVID-19 disease is currently being developed by several research teams. At its most advanced stage is the biotechnology company Moderna from Massachusetts, which announced at the end of February that the first batch of vaccines, called mRNA-1273, was sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the United States. In mid-March, tests on a group of 45 volunteers began. The first person to receive the experimental vaccine was Jennifer Haller. According to the company’s estimates, the works will be completed in a year at the earliest.
- Also Read: Jennifer Haller has volunteered to test a COVID-19 vaccine. She told how it looks in practice
The German biotechnology company CureVac is in its preclinical testing phase and hopes to start clinical trials in humans in the summer. The vaccine developed in Germany is an mRNA-based preparation. Preclinical research is also conducted by Clover Biopharmaceuticals from China. It uses the patented Trimer-Tag technology, thanks to which a vaccine based on the S-protein (S-Trimer) of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus is to be created. This protein is responsible for the virus binding to the host cell.
Their own versions of vaccines are also prepared by companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Algernon Pharmaceuticals, Altimmune or Apeiron Biologics.
Canadians who opt for vaccines in genetically modified plants have an unusual proposition. The biotechnology company Medicago obtained a vaccine from tobacco leaves within 20 days. The production technique, which differs from the traditional one, is cheaper and faster. If preclinical testing of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus vaccine is successful, Medicago said clinical trials in humans will begin this summer.
- Read more: COVID-19 vaccine produced in tobacco leaves? An innovative solution
The Polish center, the Medical Research Agency, has also prepared its own development of a vaccine for the coronavirus, the aim of which is to include Polish scientific staff in global research.
– The Agency selected three Polish centers for cooperation: the Łukasiewicz Research Network – Institute of Biotechnology and Antibiotics together with a team of prof. Marcin Drąg from the Wrocław University of Technology, the National Oncology Institute in a consortium with the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Medical University of Warsaw, and the Medical University of Wrocław. These works will involve the development of a slightly different type of vaccine containing nanoparticles combined with a bacteriophage, according to PAP.
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Have a question about the coronavirus? Send them to the following address: [email protected]. You will find a daily updated list of answers HERE: Coronavirus – frequently asked questions and answers.