Multiple coronavirus vaccines could be ready for mass-use by the end of this year, according to a British pharmaceutical giant.
AstraZeneca said it was on track to produce millions of its experimental COVID-19 jab – called AZD1222 – by September.
The jab, developed by scientists at Oxford University, has moved into larger human trials after showing promise in earlier studies.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said he believed ‘several’ other vaccines would be ready in the autumn, too.
The Cambridge-based firm announced plans last week to scale up production of the vaccine to a billion doses by mid-2021.
GlaxoSmithKline, headquartered in Brentford, and US drugs giants Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer also unveiled plans today to produce a billion doses of their vaccines next year.
Speaking at a virtual press conference, the chief executives from the big four pharma companies said human trials of their vaccines were going ‘so far, so good’.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said he believes there will be ‘several’ Covid vaccines ready for mass-use this year
Speaking at a virtual press conference, the chief executives from the big four pharma companies leading the race for a coronavirus jab said human trials of their vaccines were going ‘so far, so good’
Emma Walmsley, CEO of Brentford-based GlaxoSmithKline, and Dr Albert Bourla, chairman at Pfizer also unveiled plans today to produce a billion doses of their vaccines next year
Estimates suggests the world will need around 4.5billion vaccine doses to put an end to the pandemic.
The virus is so hard to track and so easy to spread that experts believe it will continue to spread through the human population indefinitely if a vaccine cannot be found.
Mr Soriot told the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) today: ‘The hope of many people is that we will have a vaccine – hopefully several – before the end of this year.
‘Capacity will continue increasing next year, both in terms of manufacturing capacity but also additional vaccines coming.
‘We could answer before the end of the year. That’s what we are all aiming at and working hard to achieve.’
Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, said: ‘I want to reinforce how important it is that we have ideally more than one vaccine….we need multiple billion doses as fast as we can collectively.
‘This is, in multiple ways, a collective rival against an unprecedented virus.’
The big four companies have agreed to initially sell their ‘not for profit’ vaccines to countries for the price it costs to make the jab.
But prices will soar when the World Health Organization (WHO) brings the global alert down from the level of pandemic.
The news that multiple vaccines could be ready by the autumn raises hopes of millions of people worldwide longing for an end to the pandemic.
But a leading member of the Oxford University trial said the study has only a 50 per cent chance of being successfully completed.
Lower transmission of the coronavirus in the community means it will be harder for trial participants to catch the virus, and for scientists to see if the vaccine is protective.
Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group began development on a vaccine in January, using a virus taken from chimpanzees.
Following an initial phase of testing on 160 healthy volunteers between 18 and 55, the study is now set to progress to phases two and three.
It will involve increasing the testing to up to 10,260 people and expanding the age range of volunteers to include children and the elderly.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, said he expected fewer than 50 of those to catch the virus. The results could be deemed useless if fewer than 20 test positive.
‘We said earlier in the year that there was an 80 per cent chance of developing an effective vaccine by September,’ he told The Sunday Telegraph.
‘But at the moment, there’s a 50 per cent chance that we get no result at all.
‘We’re in the bizarre position of wanting Covid to stay, at least for a little while. But cases are declining.’
If SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, is not spreading in the community, volunteers will find it difficult to catch, meaning scientists can’t prove whether the vaccine actually makes any difference.
AstraZeneca has announced a deal with the US to produce 400million doses of the vaccine – which is still not proven – and 100million for the UK.
Britain has agreed to pay for up the doses ‘as early as possible’ – with ministers hoping for a third of those to be ready for September if proven effective.
The vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been genetically changed so it is impossible for it to grow in humans.
The intellectual rights to its vaccine are owned by the University of Oxford and a spin-out company called Vaccitech.
Clinical teams at the Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group began developing the vaccine in January.
It’s a type of immunisation known as a recombinant viral vector vaccine.
Researchers place genetic material from the coronavirus into another virus that’s been modified. They will then inject the virus into a human, hoping to produce an immune response against SARS-CoV-2.
This virus, weakened by genetic engineering, is a type of virus called an adenovirus, the same as those which cause common colds, that has been taken from chimpanzees.
If the vaccines can successfully mimic the spikes inside a person’s bloodstream, and stimulate the immune system to create special antibodies to attack it, this could train the body to destroy the real coronavirus if they get infected with it in future.
It was developed so rapidly by Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology, and her team because they already had a base vaccine for similar coronaviruses.
The team have gone through stages of vaccine development that usually take five years in just four months.
However, Professor Gilbert said that none of the normal safety steps had been missed out.