Another coronavirus vaccine candidate might be ready sooner than expected

The development of vaccines for the novel coronavirus has been rather promising so far, with more than 100 teams moving forward with drugs for neutralizing the virus and preventing infection. Separately, research has shown that COVID-19 survivors will be immune, and that vaccine candidates can induce the same kind of immunity in subjects. While it’s still unclear how long COVID-19 protection lasts, vaccines would make the disease a lot easier to control.

Around 10 groups are already testing their drugs on human volunteers, and some of them might be ready as soon as this fall if all goes well. Companies like Moderna and researchers from Oxford said their vaccines might be delivered in the coming months, with the Oxford team saying its drug could be ready by September. Separately, China has at least four candidates in testing. Officials said they’re already devising plans for emergency use of these drugs, with some immunizations to take place as soon as this year, regardless of whether the clinical trials are completed or not. Pfizer now joins the list of entities that might have a vaccine candidate ready in 2020, with a tentative availability window set for October.

Pfizer partnered with German biopharmaceutical company BioNTech and started tests in Germany and the USA a few weeks ago. Neither company published data about the early-stage trials. In fact, only China’s CanSino released official findings for Phase 1, with Moderna highlighting partial conclusions from its own experiments and Oxford releasing data for the preclinical phase. But Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said his company believes a vaccine candidate could be ready before the end of the year, AFP reports, via Times of Israel.

https://bgr.com/2020/05/30/coronavirus-treatment-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-candidate-trials-october/

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