Promises on Covid-19 Vaccines
Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD
Vaccines play a vital role in keeping us healthy. Currently, scientists are racing through development at speeds never before seen. Even if the stages of vaccine development could be compressed and supplies could be quickly manufactured, it could take months or longer before people can have access to it.
The World Health Organization closely monitors Covid-19 vaccines which are designed in academic laboratories without having the commercial production capacity. Whereas China has widespread vaccine production capacity and other developing countries including India, Indonesia, and Brazil are amongst the world’s largest vaccine producers and exporters, a sizable amount of the manufacturing capacity belonging to pharmaceutical companies that sell vaccine in North America and Europe is based in the United States.
Assuming a vaccine can be developed rapidly, the production of some vaccine candidates could be easily ramped up than others it is conceivable that they could use the existing plants to produce more vaccines. Production of this type of candidate could reach hundreds of millions of doses within about a year, yet any vaccines would require longer time to reach those output levels.
An RNA vaccine project is being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, began testing four possible vaccines in a compressed Phase ½ trial in the US on May 5, 2020. In addition, Moderna signed a deal with pharmaceutical company Lonzo to produce 1 billion doses of the vaccine in the U.S. and in Switzerland. Nevertheless, of who gets vaccines, it is believed that most new vaccines will require at least two doses to be effective, so any estimates of numbers of doses available in the autumn will need to be divided by two to find out how many people could expect to be vaccinated. The public, both in US and abroad need clear communications about realistic times to COVID-19 vaccine access. Yet when vaccines do start to become available, demand will be enormous and supply will be minimal.
SOURCE
Mounting promises on Covid-19 vaccines are fueling false expectations, experts say
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19-vaccine-frontrunners-67382
https://www.biospace.com/article/moderna-vaccine-clinical-trial-moves-into-2nd-round-of-dosing/
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This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.