admin Although there are 13+ experimental vaccines in clinical trials among the 140 being developed to fight Coronavirus, the World Health Organisation has identified the candidates developed by Oxford University-AstraZeneca and Moderna Inc performing best among all the vaccines.
“Certainly in terms of how advanced they are, the stage at which they are, they are I think probably the leading candidate,” Reuters mentioned WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan as informed.
“We do know that Moderna’s vaccine is also going to go into phase three clinical trials, probably from the middle of July, and so that vaccine candidate is not far behind. AstraZeneca certainly has a more global scope at the moment in terms of where they are doing and planning their vaccine trials,” stated Swaminathan.
AstraZeneca, which has already begun phase III human trials of its vaccine candidate, signed its 10th supply-and-manufacturing contract. Brazil declared on Saturday it had signed a $127 million agreement to start producing locally the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Elcio Franco, Brazil’s No.2 public health official, informed in a press conference that the country would initially produce 30 million doses of the vaccine — half by December and half by January of next year, according to the Reuters.
Previously, the AstraZeneca CEO expressed a radio station that the vaccine candidate would likely provide protection against Covid-19 for one year.
Moderna Inc from US has already in progress of phase II trials for its vaccine candidate mRNA-1273, has united with drugmaker Catalent Inc to produce 100 million doses starting in the third quarter of 2020.
Under the contract, Catalent will also provide packaging and labeling, storage and distribution services to support Moderna’s late-stage clinical trial for the vaccine. Catalent has partnered with Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
Currently, Moderna Inc Chief Executive Officer Stephane Bancel informed to Bloomberg that efficacy data for its Covid-19 jab could be available by as soon as Thanksgiving (November) if everything goes right. Final-stage trials of the Moderna vaccine is set to begin next month on 30,000 people.
French pharmaceutical, Sanofi has made a Covid-19 vaccine candidate with GSK, recently it had enhanced the start of phase 1/2 clinical trials to September from December. In a statement, Sanofi stated they have “multiple Covid-19 vaccine candidates” in the works and hope to start a clinical trial with humans in the fourth quarter of this year. They also declared it would spend $425 million to enlarge its vaccine development venture with US start-up Translate Bio.
Paul Hudson, Sanofi CEO told journalists earlier this week that his firm’s most promising Covid-19 treatment is “the only vaccine in the race which is offering a proven platform which works at scale”. Sanofi is having one of GSK’s proprietary adjuvants — a compound that boosts the immune response
with this vaccine. The French firm assumes to have 100 million doses of the recombinant vaccine by the end of 2020 and an additional 1 billion doses in 2021.
Thailand has 7 vaccine studies underway using a variety of methods, has stated human trials of one of the candidates could start as early as October. “Blood results after the first injection in monkeys showed all generated antibodies, Kiat Ruxrungtham, head researcher at Chulalongkorn University’s Center of Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development said, reported Bloomberg.
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