At least two COVID-19 vaccine companies that receive millions of dollars from the US government plan to avoid profit or set a single global price if their vaccines are successful.
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On Tuesday, a House subcommittee will face heads of five pharmaceutical companies leading the effort, unveiling different timelines and ideas about cost and access. They are AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna and Pfizer.
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So far, the United States has invested nearly $ 2.3 billion in the effort to find a vaccine to stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which has killed more than 140,000 Americans.
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AstraZeneca said it will make two billion doses of its nonprofit vaccine, according to prepared comments published Monday night by Executive Vice President Menelas Pangalos.
The British-Swedish company has signed agreements with the US and several other countries and organizations to supply vaccines.
“The cost of vaccine doses under those agreements will not provide a profit to AstraZeneca,” the statement said.
AstraZeneca, which is creating a vaccine in conjunction with the University of Oxford, UK, said on Monday that it hopes to have a vaccine available early next year.
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The United States paid $ 1.2 billion for access to 300 million doses of the candidate vaccine through Operation Warp Speed, a White House task force focused on bringing coronavirus therapies and vaccines to market as soon as possible.
An article published Monday gave hope to the overall success of possible vaccines. The results showed that the Oxford candidate vaccine, AZD-1222, led to strong immune responses for nearly two months in a trial that continues to track more than 1,000 healthy adults.
Pangalos said his company plans to supply approximately two billion doses worldwide to provide “broad and equitable access.” The company is building parallel supply chains around the world to produce those doses, he said.
Johnson and Johnson
Johnson & Johnson will charge a global price for its vaccine, regardless of country or income level, according to the written statement by Dr. Macaya Douoguih’s head of clinical development and medical affairs.
The company is committed to making an affordable COVID-19 vaccine available “for nonprofit use for an emergency pandemic,” its statement said. It will seek external validation to calculate the price and will make an external audit or certification available.
The company has received approximately $ 500 million from Operation Warp Speed for its work.
Johnson & Johnson plans to test its candidate vaccine in humans later this month in the United States and Belgium. If the preliminary results are positive, it will launch a Phase 3 global clinical trial in September.
Phase 3 trials are the final and largest testing step for vaccines once established, do not cause immediate adverse effects, and elicit an immune response. The COVID-19 Phase 3 trials will involve 30,000 patients for each vaccine candidate and will take many months.
Merck
The American pharmaceutical company Merck is looking for two possible vaccine candidates. He focused on his long career in vaccine development and the need for safety, and was open-minded about the possibility that a breakthrough might not be a fact.
“If the approaches developed by others ultimately prove superior to those pursued by Merck, we will work to support those efforts to benefit global health during the pandemic,” said the statement by Dr. Julie Gerberding, executive vice president of the company. and Chief Patient Officer.
Merck holds the record for creating the fastest vaccine ever released, a 1967 mumps vaccine that took four years from start to finish. But the company has repeatedly emphasized speed over speed in its COVID-19 job.
“Speed is important, but we will not compromise scientific effectiveness, quality and, above all, safety, despite the sense of urgency we all feel,” said Gerberding’s testimony.
Merck CEO Kenneth Fraizer said last week that you can’t rush a vaccine and that rigorous science is required.
“When people tell the public that there will be a vaccine by the end of 2020, for example, I think they seriously harm the public,” he said in an interview with the Harvard Business School.
Merck has received $ 38 million for vaccine research from the U.S. Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority.
Modern
Moderna has entered into agreements with a Swiss-based vaccine manufacturer with sites in the United States and around the world, which will enable it to achieve an annual manufacturing capacity of more than 500 million doses, according to the statement by the president of the company, Dr. Stephen Hoge. .
His research into candidate vaccines has been partially facilitated by $ 536 million from Operation Warp Speed.
Massachusetts-based Moderna expects to begin phase 3 of its vaccine candidate’s clinical trials this month, its president, Dr. Stephen Hoge, said in his written statement.
Phase 1 results were presented last week. The vaccine appears to be safe and to trigger an immune response. According to several experts who reviewed the results, it is unclear whether the immune response is sufficient to protect someone from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Pfizer
Only among the five companies that will testify Tuesday, Pfizer has not taken any money from the US government, as it works on four different vaccines for COVID-19.
“We are in a unique position with the scientific knowledge and experience, manufacturing scale and financial resources to have the potential to deliver a potential vaccine without federal government funding,” said John Young, chief commercial officer of Pfizer, in a statement. prepared.
He anticipated that the company will invest around $ 1 billion in its vaccine development efforts during 2020.
Pfizer is partnering with a German biotech company BioNTech to work on a COVID-19 vaccine. You are currently running early state clinical trials in the US and the European Union.
Last week it announced that two of its four vaccine candidates had received a fast designation from the Food and Drug Administration. Expect to start Phase 2 testing later this month.
If clinical trials progress well, the company expects to manufacture up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020, and potentially more than 1.3 billion doses in 2021 globally, according to Young’s statement.
Contributing: Karen Weintraub
This article originally appeared in the US TODAY: At least two pharmaceutical companies promise affordable COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
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