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The CEO of Moderna, one of the companies that makes the vaccine against Covid-19, warned that the coronavirus will stay with us forever. At the same time, he hopes that the mRNA technology they use will be successfully deployed against many infectious diseases. At the moment, vaccination against Covid also appears to be effective against mutations.
Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, says the SARS-Cov-2 virus, which causes Covid-19 disease, will not go away. I believe we will live with the virus forever, he said in a panel discussion Wednesday at a conference hosted by JPMorgan, according to CNBC.
The past year significantly changed the way the world treats infectious diseases. A few years ago, many believed that infectious diseases have no future, but we think otherwise, that is why we invest a lot in vaccines, said Bancel. According to him, in the next 5, 10, 20 years, consumers and health experts will pay much more attention to infectious diseases, as there is a lot of unmet need for health care in this area.
Bancel sees the mRNA platform they have developed as the best way to develop effective vaccines and they also have the potential to combine multiple antigens within a single vaccine with current technology. By the way, this has already been done for a vaccine against CMV (a type of herpes virus) that is currently in phase 3 clinical trials (this means testing in thousands of people). Furthermore, vaccines against different diseases, which are made on the same platform, go through the same manufacturing process, on the same production line and after the same rapid development ”, he continued in his presentation.
The success of the mRNA technology they use is well illustrated by the fact that nine viruses have so far reached the vaccine stage in clinical trials and have been able to elicit an antibody response in all trials. According to him, the unmet need for infectious diseases in the medical field is staggering. He recalled that a total of more than 80 different viruses have been discovered around the world since 1980, and only 4 percent of these are currently vaccinated, but not many, more.
The global vaccine market reached $ 55 billion in 2019. Moderna has signed a total of $ 11.7 billion in contracts with governments in several countries this year to supply the SARS-Cov-2 vaccine, and that amount does not include options. The company is expected to receive more orders this year. In 2021, 600 million quietly, but if production is managed to rebound as planned, a billion doses of the vaccine could be administered, which could rise to 1.2 billion by 2022.
Teens can get it until the summer, maybe kids next year.
Modern Covid-19 vaccination has been approved so far in 30 countries. According to the CEO, the license is now being expanded to cover not only adults, but also children over the age of 12, and he sees an opportunity for this in early summer. Experiments are also being conducted in younger children, but studies of the vaccine to be administered to them are likely to be postponed until 2022.
According to the CEO, they have been vaccinated against several developing respiratory infections, but they are also developing a flu vaccine, the experimental results of which are very promising. A vaccine against mononucleosis is also being developed, which is not yet on the market.
Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, said its Covid-19 vaccine said there was still no indication that the antibodies produced in response to the vaccine were not successfully fighting them. According to its definition, it is necessary to begin to worry if there is real clinical data that people who have ever had the disease or have been vaccinated against it become ill en masse by the new variant of the virus.
Of course, the medical director added, there have been reports of a few reinfections, but given the millions of infections, that’s not a significant number yet. So far, the amount of antibodies in humans has not been observed to have decreased in experiments to an amount that should be cause for concern.
They can move quickly if necessary
However, it cannot be ruled out that a variant of the virus will come, say SARS-CoV-21, or something else, and vaccination against it will not be effective. We are constantly monitoring events, as are many others, and if such a mutation arrives, we will start developing a vaccine against it. The technology we use is adequate for that, ”said Bancel.
By the way, Bancel confirmed during the presentation that the vaccine was not developed in a few months, since the technology itself, which made the manufacture of the vaccine possible, has been used by the company’s specialists for a decade.
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