Predicting when a COVID-19 vaccine will be developed, licensed, and manufactured at a global scale is, frankly, a mug’s game. The shortest predicted timeframe — that it may be ready within 12 months of the mid-January release of the virus genome by Chinese researchers — would be an unprecedented achievement.
To put it in perspective, the HPV vaccine took 15 years.
During the Zika outbreak in 2015, a vaccine was ready for testing after about seven months, but the epidemic slowed before an approved vaccine got to clinical trials. Likewise, attempts to develop vaccines for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) were shelved when those outbreaks where contained.
But this crisis represents something new. Here are some of the local and international efforts, and where they’re at.
Flinders University
Flinders say they’re “closing in” on a vaccine. Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky told Crikey his team’s target was to have a vaccine in human trials as soon as they had the animal testing results in six to eight weeks time.
“The commonly quoted 12-18 month timeframe is in respect of highly experimental vaccines that have not been previously extensively tested in humans,” he said.
Petrovsky said as soon as the genomic sequence of COVID-19 became available in January, his team used this, “combined with our previous experience in developing a SARS coronavirus vaccine” to characterise the key viral attachment molecule called the spike protein.
Though he stressed expectations should be realistic until all testing is completed, Petrovsky said that, with the right government support, he was confident that a vaccine could be “developed extremely rapidly and in humans before the end of this year”.
He said the team had built a pandemic vaccine platform over roughly the last 15 years that was designed to be “plug and play”.
“We have extensively tested this plug and play pandemic vaccine platform in multiple human studies and shown it to be effective and safe including against various strains of bird and swine flu. We also showed it was effective against SARS coronavirus in animal studies,” he said.
“So the reason we can be so fast versus other groups out there is we just needed to swap in the sequence for the COVID-19 attachment protein into our vaccine and start manufacturing it.”
Moderna
Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company based in Boston, has shipped the first batches of its COVID-19 vaccine. The first vials were sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which will ready the vaccine for human testing as early as this month.
Moderna was given approval to skip the animal testing portion, potentially skimming years off the development process. The company says a best case scenario could mean a vaccine by March next year.
CanSino
The United States and China are leading the charge to develop a vaccine, a kind of 21st century Space Race. A day after Moderna got approval, CanSino, a Chinese biotech working with the country’s Academy of Military Medical Science announced it was also proceeding to human clinical trials.
CanSino said it had already got positive results testing its vaccine on animals. Human testing will continue for the rest of the year.
CSIRO
CSIRO scientists have begun work on testing for a potential vaccine to coronavirus.
The testing will be carried out at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (on ferrets, who contract the virus in the same way as humans) in Geelong and is expected to take three months.
CSIRO’s director of health Rob Grenfell told Reuters his team were working at a “remarkable” pace, reaching the pre-clinical testing stage — which usually takes up to two year — in about eight weeks.
However he was sticking to the 18-month time frame for developing and delivering a vaccine to the public.
British American Tobacco
In “why the fuck not, it’s 2020” news: British American Tobacco (BAT) has announced that its US biotech subsidiary, Kentucky BioProcessing, has moved to pre-clinical testing for a tobacco plant-based vaccine.
While stressing it is in the early stages of development, BAT has said it could produce up to three million COVID-19 vaccines weekly by June — as long as it receives government support and can form partnerships with other researchers.
We’re sure the research has nothing to do with keeping their customers, which the virus appears to be wiping out even faster that the rest of us.
The University of Queensland
UQ was working with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) way back in January 2019, preparing vaccines to stop (what was then) the world’s next epidemic (and is now just life).
Unsurprisingly, it has recently gotten a funding bump from both state and federal government, to the tune of $17 million. UQ is pushing to start clinical trials by July, and says the extra money could help it shave up to six months off the development time frame.
Also at UQ, researchers are set to begin clinical trials of a potential treatment for COVID-19 using existing drugs for the treatment of HIV and malaria.
However, UQ Centre for Clinical Research director David Paterson was forced to issue an import clarification: “I have never suggested these drugs be used before a trial establishes their efficacy. Unfortunately, my comments have on some occasions been used out of context … I do not support the stockpiling of these drugs.”
Monash University
Scientists at Monash University and the Peter Doherty Institute say they’ve found that an existing anti-parasitic drug — Ivermectin, used to treat viruses such as HIV, dengue, influenza and Zika — also kills the coronavirus in test tubes in 48 hours.
“Ivermectin is very widely used and seen as a safe drug. We need to figure out now whether the dosage you can use it at in humans will be effective — that’s the next step,” Dr Kylie Wagstaff, who led the study, told the Australian Financial Review.
“In times when we’re having a global pandemic and there isn’t an approved treatment, if we had a compound that was already available around the world, then that might help people sooner.”
Monash is still seeking funding for pre-clinical testing and clinical trials, making a time frame impossible to nail down. But according to Wagstaff “realistically, it’s going to be a while before a vaccine is broadly available”.
Oncogen
It’s not just China, Western Europe and America working on vaccines. OncoGen, a research centre based in the Romanian city of Timisoara, began trialling a vaccine in March.
While the country does not usually produce vaccines due to a lack of resources, researchers say they’re hoping their efforts show they “stand shoulder to shoulder” with their colleagues across the world.
Let’s hope someone besides the yanks develop a vaccine first. Otherwise it will cost a thousand dollars a pop and be refused to China, Iran, North Korea and a host of other sanctioned countries.
And let’s hope it’s not British and American Tobacco, which will likely turn the vaccinated into smokers; it’s where the company will see mandatory booster shots having a role.
Depends which one
I don’t believe that main-stream scientists are racing for the good of all mankind. Since when did mainstream anything, media? religion? science? economics? politics? democracy? ever work for the common good of every woman, man and child? These so called institutions come together to work for an agenda that over-lays the impression of serving us as they corner us into servitude and deny us our freedoms, equality, liberty and now thanks to C19, fraternity and god knows what else is to come.
Well, fraternity has gone. We can’t even meet in numbers greater than two. This guarantees no protesting in the streets under the threat of arrest….or worse.
I cannot see why they cannot invent a device like a breathalyzer that picks up any respiratory viral infection including the different strains of flu. And mass produce them so everyone can be tested at the same time. Then we can all get back to work. We make the equivalent of 50 million beer bottles a day but we do not seem able to produce test kits in bulk.
As for the scientists, they are probably all working individually in the dark surrounded by intellectual property lawyers and corporate equity MBAs. If they pooled their knowledge it would be amazing what they could develop. Just look at what happened in the UK and the USA during WWII.
Unfortunately this article is written for and by those who remain compliant within the belief that we cannot control our own lives, and we only have one recourse available. To establish another Leader, cos we have no belief that we can do anything without a Leader. Why do we persist in believing that the old Leader can be improved by a new Leader?
Are you ready to line up for your invisible digital tattoo?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), designed a process of eugenics within a program named
ID2020 agenda.
Briefly, (BMGF) has declared that the world population needs reducing, and his compassionate regime has been rehearsing that efficacy by freely vaccinating many ‘third world communities’. Strangely these vaccinations have caused infertility, viral deaths, child paralysis etc. The Gates Foundation is a primary financier of the WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION. The rush to provide vaccination for CORVID19, a still unproven virus that identifies itself as just a brand name, is an International effort to mandate universal digital identification. We are already accepting travel restrictions without an ‘Identifying Medical Certificate’.
Any free thinkers out there without the soon to be mandated, “digital health certification” will be restricted from attending all social access etc. Imagine, all those people missing the footy now will of course line up for the compulsory vaccinations, cos they are also told they are too stupid to have any control in their lives, and will OBEY. STAY AT HOME!
Is This You?
We must challenge these newly arising surreptitious laws developing around us, keeping us comatose beneath an habitual acceptance that the ‘Leader Knows Best’. If this so called ‘rebellious dissent’ is wrong, at least we have remained part of the decision, other wise, Bend Over and Spread em.
Good to see someone speaking up about this here. I saw coming this when they brought in the no jab no play. Forget about pro or anti immunisation for a moment and look at how our freedoms are being eroded and sold to us in the the name of the greater good. It may start with just making immunisation compulsory for kids, and penalising anyone semi or wholly dependent on the system. ( I mean they deserve to be penalised if they don’t immunise right? They are putting the rest of us at risk). But just wait until it rolls out for everyone and other control of basic human rights are attached to it to make people complient. Whether you are a pro or anti vac person, this road is a scary one we are headed down. Follow the money and put the pieces together, it is not really for the greater good of everyone at all.
Hi Blokes – its good to know that scientists are racing for the good of all mankind – I suppose that leaves the rest of us 51% with the scientists racing for the bad of all womankind. Have a bit of generosity in your writing – it’s not a big ask to write humankind.