Coronavirus Update: White House Picks Five Vaccines For US Operation Warp Speed
Fauci Cautiously Optimistic About 2020 Goal
Executive Summary
An official announcement is expected within weeks, as competition between US and China stokes fears of 'vaccine nationalism'.
White House Picks Five Vaccines For US Operation Warp Speed
The US has selected five projects which it sees as the most likely to produce a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, the New York Times reports.
While an official announcement is still a few weeks away, the programs led by Moderna Inc., AstraZeneca PLC, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Merck are understood to have been shortlisted.
Senior officials at the White House say these five have also been selected for their ability to provide mass immunization across the US by the end of 2020, with Moderna and AstraZeneca’s candidates most likely to meet this ambitious goal.
Moderna’s candidate mRNA-1273 is being co-developed by the US National Institutes of Health and AstraZeneca is working with the University of Oxford on its AZD1222. Both these candidates are already in Phase II trials, and are expected to enter Phase III by next month.
Conspicuous by its absence from the US shortlist is the Sanofi and GSK vaccine collaboration, which is seen as one of the most promising, if not the fastest, projects. A row over whether or not the US could demand priority access to it would be the most obvious politically-motivated reason for it not being included. (Also see "Sanofi Calms France's Fears Over COVID-19 Vaccine Access" - Scrip, 15 May, 2020.)
Operation Warp Speed was launched by President Trump on 15 May, and aims to secure accelerated access for the US to a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Ex-GSK vaccines leader Moncef Slaoui is leading the initiative with the US army's General Gustave Perna.
While the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) has given multi-million dollar sum to each of these manufacturers ($483m in Moderna's case, and $1bn to AstraZeneca), both companies have also pledged to distribute their vaccines fairly across the globe.
Meanwhile other countries, most notably China, are also focusing their own efforts on producing a vaccine at unprecedented speed. China has two lead candidates in development, CanSino’s Ad5-nCov and Sinovac’s PiCoVacc.
The launching of Operation Warp Speed by President Trump has raised further concerns about so-called “vaccine nationalism” whereby competition between countries could limit the availability to the most needy around the world, especially those in less developed countries.
Industry leaders such as Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla have raised these concerns, and are looking to non-government organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi to broker a global agreement on distribution. (Also see "Pfizer Chief Calls Patent Pool ‘Nonsense’, Fears Tussle Over Vaccine" - Scrip, 29 May, 2020.)
A virtual conference will be hosted by the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson today to raise funding for Gavi, aiming to raise $7.4bn to distribute vaccines against a range of infectious diseases in some of the poorest countries of the world over the next five years.
Meanwhile, the head of the US National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci has become more optimistic about the chances of a vaccine or vaccines being ready before the end of 2020.
Fauci told a JAMA online briefing: “I am cautiously optimistic that with the multiple candidates with different platforms that we’re going to have a vaccine that shows a degree of efficacy and would make it deployable.”
However he added that he was more concerned about the durability of any resulting vaccine, as previous research done in the field against the coronavirus family, such as those that cause the common cold, has shown it very difficult to produce immunity lasting more than a year.
Another major challenge is the sheer number of doses required globally, with some estimating as many as 15bn doses will be required worldwide, far exceeding the current capacity of existing seasonal flu production.
The New York Times report on the five selected candidates had an immediate effect on the share prices of two other frontrunner companies not included. Inovio Pharmaceuticals saw its shares close down 13%, while Novovax was down 11%.