COVID-19 vaccine inching towards clinical trials

Washington: Just three months after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, several biotech companies in the United States have ramped up their efforts to fight the disease with accelerated schedules for creating new vaccines and beginning clinical trials for potential treatments.

In normal circumstances, vaccine development would take around 10 years. But the pharmaceutical industry is racing to compress this timeline with the support of non-profit organisations, government agencies and regulatory authorities.

In just a few months, more than two dozen companies have announced promising vaccine programmes, speeding through the early stages of testing unlike ever before, The Strait Times reported.

On Wednesday, Novavax, a Maryland-based biotech company, said its vaccine candidate had stimulated a powerful immune response in lab and animal experiments, producing antibodies that could fight off the coronavirus. The vaccine is set to begin human trials in Australia in mid-May.

While a final product that would be widely available is still a year or more away, the Novavax effort is one of many ready to be tested on people.

A vaccine made by biotech company Moderna is already in a clinical trial, which started March 15.Another one, developed by Inovio Pharmaceuticals, was injected into the first adult volunteers on Monday.

Health care giant Johnson and Johnson expects to start clinical trials in September and has received a nearly US$500 million partnership via a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

In addition, experimental vaccines developed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Baylor College of Medicine are also waiting for permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin testing in people.

"We're all trying to do something which we have almost no precedents for, which is accelerating a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic," said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine.

There is no proven treatment or vaccine yet against Covid-19, which has already affected more than one million people around the world so far. A vaccine would be the best way to stop further spread of the coronavirus because it enhances the immune system's natural defences.