Vaccine experts report that the rapid progress on COVID-19 trials is a result of unprecedented global cooperation and focus
John Cairns
- On November 19 Oxford University announced that its own COVID-19 vaccine, developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca, produced a safe immune response in older adults.
- Sarah Gilbert, vaccine knowledge project manager at Oxford University, said that the removal of traditional barriers in vaccine development have facilitated the rapid progress.
- Because of her work, Business Insider named Gilbert to our annual list of the 10 leaders transforming healthcare in Europe.
- Visit Business Insider's Transforming Business homepage for more stories.
Though the mounting global death toll may tell its own story, recent events indicate that in the battle against COVID-19, humanity is mounting a comeback.
More than 1.3 million people have died worldwide because of the disease, and more than 55 million have been confirmed as infected. The United States has the unenviable position at the top of the leaderboard for COVID-19 deaths, crossing 250,000 recently.
But there may be promise of a COVID-free future with the development of vaccines.
Business Insider's Transformers 100 feature in Europe highlights the work of a number of laboratories developing vaccines, including Oxford University, under the management of Sarah Gilbert, distinguished scientist, who told Business Insider, "Many of the usual barriers to progress — money, staff availability, time to review applications — have been removed and so we are making rapid progress."
That rapid progress is nowhere more evident than with Oxford University's announcement on November 19 that a vaccine, developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca, produced a safe immune response in older adults.
That follows two other announcements of successful vaccine trials by Pfizer and Moderna that show up to 95% effectiveness in patients.
An effective, safe vaccine available for the general population in the coming months is coming closer to fruition , though global rollout will likely take many years.
"As expected, the timelines have been really cut short," Melvin Sanicas, a vaccinologist with the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in the UK said. "Typically vaccines take five to 10 years to develop, or even longer, but as we can see now we probably will have a vaccine approved by the end of the year or early next year. This is definitely exciting."
Sanicas says that the wave of optimism about the vaccines currently being declared effective is definitely justified.
Two of the vaccines use mRNA, a technology that is "really novel," he said. "We don't have an existing mRNA vaccine for animals or humans."
What's more, the reported effectiveness of the vaccines to date outstrips the levels that most expected. "The US FDA mentioned the threshold for the vaccine efficacy they would accept is something like 50%, and the European Medical Agency said 60%," he said.
"The expectation is that the vaccine would have an efficacy around that. Now we see the vaccine efficacy of these two is huge. It's really very encouraging."
Both Gilbert and Sanicas point out that the amount of dedicated resources and collaboration on the national and global level has given scientists an unprecedented advantage in the battle against coronavirus.
"We have seen that if everyone stops what they're doing and focuses on something, things happen much faster," Sanicas said. "For COVID, there are over 200 groups working on vaccines at the moment, and this has never happened before in the past for any pathogen — not even HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, or the flu pandemic in 2009.
"It just shows that things can actually be made quicker if there are resources and political will towards collaboration."
Better yet, the three vaccines currently announced as effective in the West aren't the end of the process. "There are other vaccines in phase three trials," Sanicas said.
Jonathan Van-Tam, the colleague of another Transformers 100 member, Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, has repeatedly told the British public that part of the battle against coronavirus will be fought through strength in numbers, not relying on simply a single silver bullet.
"It would really be good if there are other vaccines that can also show they're effective and safe," Sanicas said. "We ideally would have lots of vaccines available."
Now that effective vaccines are within range, industry experts are turning their attention towards logistics. Widespread use of a COVID-19 vaccine will require supply chains to ramp up production and scale up distribution while navigating various regulatory authorities around the world. All of this is set against the backdrop of several COVID-19 vaccines awaiting trial results in the coming months.
Vaccines developed by CanSino and SinoPharm, two Chinese developers, are being used in countries like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. They're expected to announce results in December or January.
Sanicas remains astounded at the way things have changed in the last few months. "We are really moving in a very different time, in terms of developing these innovations," he said. Moderna's vaccine candidate was created four or five weeks after the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus was released by Chinese scientists. "That has never happened before," he said. "That scale of speed."
However, he cautions against assuming everything will be as speedy going forward.
"I think a lot of people, who are especially not working in the science or the vaccine industry, are expecting these innovations to be available now, but for people who have been working on drugs and vaccine development for years, you realize we live in a very different world," he said.
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