This archive report was first published on 20 May 2020.
Coronavirus Vaccine Development: A Global Effort ¶
As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are racing against time to develop a coronavirus vaccine. With multiple approaches and companies involved, the stakes are high, and the urgency is palpable.
Researchers at the University of Oxford in England are testing vaccines in human subjects, with the goal of having one ready for emergency use by September. Companies like Inovio and Pfizer have begun early tests of candidates in people to determine whether their vaccines are safe.
According to Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, 'trying to compress the whole vaccine process into 12 to 18 months is really unheard-of.' However, with the new coronavirus appearing to be a slow mutator, scientists are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for a new vaccine.
More than 100 research teams around the world are taking aim at the virus from multiple angles. Some vaccine makers, including Inovio, are developing vaccines based on DNA variations of the mRNA technology used by Moderna. Others are using harmless viruses to deliver coronavirus genes into cells, forcing them to produce proteins that may teach the immune system to watch out for the coronavirus.
As the development of a coronavirus vaccine gains momentum, the challenge of scaling up production becomes increasingly pressing. With almost everyone on the planet vulnerable to the new coronavirus, each person may need two doses of a new vaccine to receive protective immunity. That's 16 billion doses.
Manufacturing vaccines is profoundly more complex than manufacturing other products, requiring large vats in which their ingredients are grown, and these have to be maintained in sterile conditions. Facilities have sprung up in recent years to make viral-vector vaccines, but meeting pandemic demand would be an enormous challenge.
As part of a public-private partnership, the White House has promised to design a kind of parallel manufacturing track to run alongside the clinical trials, building up capacity well before trials are concluded. President Trump has said that the goal of the project is to distribute a vaccine 'prior to the end of the year.'
