COVID-19 vaccine likely by September: Three drug candidates currently in clinical trials

As COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to increase rapidly across the globe, researchers are burning the midnight oil to find the cure as sooner as possible. Several vaccine candidates are under development in many countries, and a few have reached clinical trials. The one question that is in the mind of everybody now is – When will a coronavirus vaccine be ready? While some experts say it won’t be available before 12 to 18 months, others suggest we will have one as early as June.

Experts at the University of Oxford believe that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate could be ready by September. Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, is leading the group which is developing the vaccine. She told BBC Radio on Monday that clinical trials at the university would start “quite soon”, calling for large-scale production facilities to be in place soon. Last week, Gilbert had said that she is “80%” confident of its success.

COVID vaccines under clinical trials

China has approved early-stage human tests for two experimental vaccines to combat the novel coronavirus. One is being developed by a Beijing-based unit of Nasdaq-listed Sinovac Biotech, and the other by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, an affiliate of state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group – reported a Chinese news agency.

Last month, the country also gave the green-light for another clinical trial for a COVID vaccine candidate developed by China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and HK-listed biotech firm CanSino Bio. This came shortly after US biotech firm Moderna announced that it had begun human tests for their vaccine with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Their vaccine, called mRNA-1273, was first injected to a few healthy participants at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. The researchers believe that the vaccine will stimulate the immune system to make antibodies that can prevent development of COVID-19.

Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also accepted an application from Inovio Pharmaceuticals to conduct Phase 1 clinical testing of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in healthy volunteers. The DNA vaccine candidate, named INO-4800, has shown promising results from preclinical studies performed on animals. It works by injecting a specifically engineered plasmid (a small, independent genetic structure) into the body so that the cells can produce a desired, targeted antibody to fight off a specific infection.

DNA vaccines are available for a variety of animal infections in veterinary medicine, but they have not been approved for human use yet.

More potential vaccines coming up

US-based biotechnology firm Novavax is ready to start the human clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate called NVX-CoV2373 next month (May). NVX-CoV2373 is a stable prefusion protein made using the company’s nanoparticle technology.

The company plans to use its Matrix-M adjuvant with the vaccine candidate to boost immune responses and induce high levels of neutralising antibodies.

A document from WHO, published this past Saturday, stated that there are now 70 candidate vaccines in development, up from to 44 on March 20. However, only three are currently being tested on humans.

The candidate vaccine developed by China’s CanSino Biological, in partnership with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, is the first and the one only to reach phase two trials, so far.

U.S. drug companies Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are the other two developers testing vaccines on humans. Both are currently in phase one. The remaining vaccines are still only in the pre-clinical trial stage.