The CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, said she was optimistic the industry will be able to make a COVID-19 immunization widely available next year.
“I share the optimism that we will have solutions next year. The challenge here is to get to the required scale,” GSK Executive Director Emma Walmsley said Tuesday at a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) online event. .
GSK is contributing adjuvants, efficacy enhancers that play a vital role in many vaccines, in various development partnerships for potential future vaccines against the novel coronavirus that has claimed more than a million lives worldwide.
The group’s most advanced project is with French partner Sanofi, and the two have said they hope to get approval for their candidate next year.
Walmsley emphasized that the industry’s unprecedented speed to develop an immunization did not compromise safety because the trials were no smaller than usual and regulators and companies were taking action in parallel that previously ran consecutively.
“We are condensing timetables that can take 10 years into two years. But people should feel very confident that the way we do it is due to a completely different level of collaboration with regulators,” said the CEO.
“We are putting our funds at risk, governments have put funds at risk so as not to restrict the scale, which is really important in a vaccine trial,” he added.
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