The most talented scientists around the world are busy developing vaccines for the virus that causes COVID-19. There have been some encouraging developments in recent weeks. There are 18 vaccine candidates under clinical evaluation world wide right now. The one that’s the furthest along is an 8,000 person Phase III trial in the UK.
There aren’t any Phase III trials underway in the US yet, but Moderna vaccine expects to go to Phase III at the end of the month or the beginning of August. Moderna’s vaccine had positive early results, developing antibodies against the virus. Another Covid-19 vaccine candidate being developed by Pfizer and a German company called BioNTech had positive data in early tests. Their preliminary findings last week (in this pre-print) developed antibodies and the vaccine was well tolerated. The company said it remains on track to be able to deliver approximately 500 million doses per year, and possibly up to one billion doses per year, beginning in 2021 from both its internal U.S. manufacturing site and a strategic collaboration with Lonza.
Inovio has stated that they have promising early data (Phase I). In that Phase I trial 94% of people developed a specific immune response in six weeks after receiving two doses of the vaccine INO-4800 and by eight weeks, the vaccine regimen was found to be safe and well-tolerated with no serious reactions.
