Latest Developments in The Covid-19 Vaccine Race: Who will win?

As countries declare stricter social distancing measures and billions of people lose their livelihoods, the COVID-19 crisis continues to dominate our everyday lives. A safe and effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is perhaps the best hope for ending the pandemic. Some of the world’s most renowned pharmaceutical giants are teasing a breakthrough, and “the rapid responses by governments, academia, and industry have already resulted in the production of more than 180 vaccine candidates, 42 of which are being tested in humans” currently. The million-dollar question is, who will win this vaccine race? We’ll look at a few probable candidates in this article.

One company in particular appears to lead the race in regard to obtaining a green light for its vaccine - Pfizer. Phil Dormitzer, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, says that their company's advantage came from a strategic partnership it had made with BioNTech SE, a German biotech company. The two companies have been working in collaboration on a flu vaccine since 2018. Thus, with the abrupt outbreak of the disease, BioNTech was able to quickly refocus its research from the flu to the coronavirus. Dormitzer says that there's a very good chance they’ll develop a vaccine; it’s only a matter of swapping out influenza genes and swapping in a SARS coronavirus spike gene.

The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech makes up one probable candidate, among several leading contenders, already in their final stage of testing. Pfizer and BioNTech should know soon if their vaccine candidate BNT172b2 is effective, with the company's CEO hinting that preliminary results could be available as soon as the end of this month. They are expecting to be able to file for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the third week of November. To qualify for an EUA, the FDA requests that any COVID-19 vaccine must collect safety data on at least half the participants in large-scale studies for two months after their second dose.       

Moderna Therapeutics, an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts is also widely considered to be a forerunner in the global vaccine race. Moderna is on its Phase 3 trial, an “important milestone for the clinical development of their vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273.” The biotechnology company has recently completed the enrolment of 30,000 participants in the final stage but has not yet applied to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization. However, the company’s president has high hope, planning to apply for authorization in early December “if all the stars align,” or in other words if their experimental vaccine obtains favorable interim results in November.

We’ve considered some companies such as Pfizer and Moderna, who have been in the center stage in the Covid-19 fight, but what about other companies who entered the race a bit later? Merck, a leader in global vaccines, had a slow start but is now catching up with their pharma peers. Merck publicly entered COVID-19 vaccine research in May, through a buyout of Themis, privately-owned Austrian biotech, and a partnership with nonprofit research group IAVI. They started phase 1/2 testing in early September with the technology acquired in the Themis buy. The IAVI partnership will use the same recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) technology as Merck's Ebola vaccine, which won FDA approval late last year.

Kartsonis, who is Merck’s VP of Clinical Research & Infectious Disease, noted their Ebola vaccine worked as well in the elderly as it did in young, healthy adults. That is very interesting to note, as efficacy on both the elderly and young is not a common feature of vaccines. If the same turns out to be true for a VSV-vectored COVID vaccine, that would be a huge selling point for Merck — given the elderly are most vulnerable, and at the highest risk from the novel coronavirus.  

As we mentioned earlier, some leading companies such as Pfizer and Moderna are already in Phase 3 testing and could potentially secure emergency use authorizations in late 2020 or early 2021. Other companies like Merck, are still starting out, but who is to say slow and steady won’t win the race? Who do you think will win the vaccine race? Let us know your thoughts below.         

Reference:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02926-w?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=organic&utm_campaign=NGMT_USG_JC01_GL_Nature

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/15/924150224/pfizer-seems-to-lead-coronavirus-vaccine-development-race-how-did-it-get-ahead

https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/06/race-for-covid-19-vaccine-slows-as-regulators-top-warp-speed-official-tap-the-breaks/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/22/health/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-trial-30000-participants/index.html

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/merck-advancing-single-dose-and-oral-coronavirus-vaccines-could-still-make-warp-speed

https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/24/here-come-the-tortoises-in-the-race-for-a-covid-19-vaccine-slow-starters-could-still-win-out/