4 years ago
Some of the top contenders in the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine are making great strides and showing promise. From Moderna, Gilead Sciences to experts at the Oxford University and other participants, the combined effort of the world of science is now racing toward finding an antidote to the coronavirus disease.
According to the World Health Organization, there are 23 candidate vaccines in the clinical evaluation phase while 140 candidate vaccines are currently in the preclinical evaluation phase.
Gilead Sciences Inc’s Remdesivir is at the forefront of the efforts to treat the disease after it helped shorten hospital recovery times in a clinical trial. Latest reports suggest that Moderna Inc’s experimental vaccine for Covid-19 was found safe in an ongoing early-stage trial and also provoked immune responses in all healthy volunteers.
China’s Sinovac and a combined effort led by British-Swedish drug company AstraZeneca and experts at the University of Oxford have their Covid-19 vaccine contenders in the third phase of trials.
• China-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd. recently received a nod for a phase III clinical trial to test the efficacy and safety of its inactivated Covid-19 vaccine.
• AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford’s viral vector vaccine is in a phase II/III trial in England and in phase III trials in Brazil and South Africa.
• CanSino Biological Inc. and Beijing Institute of Biotechnology’s vaccine candidate has gone up to phase II of the trial.
• Then comes US biotech firm Moderna Inc., which on Tuesday, announced it would enter the final stage of human trials for its Covid-19 vaccine on July 27. The announcement came shortly after the New England Journal of Medicine published results from the first stage of Moderna’s vaccine trial, which showed the first 45 participants all developed antibodies to the virus, news agency AFP reported.
• Pennsylvania-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals’ vaccine candidate is currently in phase I/II phase of the trial. It posted positive interim results from the initial two cohorts in phase I clinical trial of its INO-4800 vaccine candidate.
• Covid-19 vaccine candidates from Osaka University/ AnGes/Takara Bio; Cadila Healthcare Limited; Wuhan Institute of Biological Products/Sinopharm; Bharat Biotech; Novavax; BioNTech/Fosun Pharma/Pfizer are currently in phase I/II of trials.
• Hyderabad-based biotech company Bharat Biotech has started human trials on its vaccine candidate, ‘Covaxin’. The contender is pegged as India’s first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine which is being developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
• The ICMR on Tuesday said that human clinical trials for Covid-19 vaccine has been initiated in the country with approximately 1,000 volunteers participating in the exercise for each of the two indigenously developed vaccine candidates, news agency PTI reported.
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has permitted two vaccines-one developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the ICMR and another by Zydas Cadila Healthcare Ltd to go in for the first and second phase of human clinical trials.
• Life sciences company IQVIA Holdings Inc said it would collaborate with AstraZeneca Plc to speed up clinical studies of the British drugmaker’s potential Covid-19 vaccine in the United States, news agency Reuters reported.
