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SINGAPORE – A COVID-19 vaccine developed jointly by an American pharmaceutical company and the Duke-NUS School of Medicine is expected to be ready and supplied to Singapore in the first quarter of next year.
The company, Arcturus Therapeutics, said in a press release on Monday (November 9) that the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) has committed US $ 45 million (S $ 60 million) to finance the manufacture of the ARCT vaccine. -021 candidate and up to an additional $ 175 million (Singapore $ 235 million) to purchase the vaccine.
The ongoing development of Phase 1/2 is taking place in Singapore and has yielded “positive interim clinical trial results,” Arcturus said.
The study involved 106 subjects, including older adult subjects. To date, 78 subjects have received at least one injection of the vaccine candidate, 36 subjects have received two injections, and 28 subjects have received placebo.
“No subjects have withdrawn from the study and there have been no serious adverse events that are considered to be related to treatment,” Arcturus said.
The company is in talks with the Singapore Health Sciences Authority to advance the candidate vaccine to clinical studies at later stages. Discussions with more agencies are expected in the coming weeks.
“The promising results of the phase 1/2 study indicate that ARCT-021 could be effective as a single administration, which differentiates this investigational vaccine from many other COVID-19 vaccines in development,” said Professor Ooi Eng Eong, Deputy Director. Emerging Infectious Diseases Program, Duke-NUS School of Medicine.
“ARCT-021 has the potential to provide significant public health benefits by greatly facilitating broad administration in multiple populations around the world,” added Professor Ooi, who is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Vaccine Platform. by Arcturus.
Andy Sassine, Arcturus CFO, said: “Together with our global manufacturing partners, we have laid the foundation to produce hundreds of millions of doses of ARCT-021 over the next 18 months.”
News of the candidate vaccine came on the same day as the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s announcement that its experimental vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 according to initial data from one study. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech are the first drug makers to announce successful data based on a large clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine.
On October 20, the Health Ministry said that Singapore plans to vaccinate parts of its population against COVID-19 starting next year after the completion of Phase 3 clinical trials on the main vaccine candidates.
Health Ministry director of medical services Kenneth Mak said many of the vaccine candidates worldwide would only complete Phase 3 studies sometime next year.
The Singaporean authorities had previously ensured that if an effective vaccine is available, all Singaporeans in need can obtain it at an affordable price.
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