Corona: Why did nothing come of the Swiss vaccine

Why did nothing come of the Swiss crown vaccine

Swiss researchers announced in spring that they would develop a coronavirus vaccine as quickly as possible. They failed due to lack of luck, money and a pharmaceutical industry that has fired the vaccination business.

The largest vaccination campaign in history has begun. On Wednesday, a 90-year-old woman was vaccinated against Sars-Cov-2 in the canton of Lucerne. This is related to the hope that the corona pandemic with its considerable “collateral damage” will be overcome in the foreseeable future, if possible as soon as next summer.

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In a first phase, the corona vaccine approved by Swissmedic will be administered last Saturday. It was developed by the German startup Biontech and the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is responsible for the production. However, there is no sign of one of the Swiss vaccines that was promised with such fuss in the spring. What happened?

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Martin Bachmann was one of the first to go to work. He is a professor of immunology at the University of Bern and, according to the NZZ, he received a call from a former employee in China earlier in the year. At Riehen (BS), biologist Peter Burkhard became aware of the new virus. He is the founder and sole employee of Alpha-O-Peptides.

The third member of the team was Stéfan Halbherr, head of research at Innomedica, a Berne start-up. It has its own production plant in Marly (FR). In April he announced to investors: “Corona Vaccine: from Switzerland, for Switzerland.” The agent named TaliCoVax19 will be ready for delivery beginning Aug. 15, he said.

The three projects worked with the same objective, with different approaches. In short, it is about getting the body to produce antibodies against Sars-Cov-2 with vaccination. These efforts were met with a great response in the media in the spring when Switzerland was caught in the first blockade.

The promise

On March 18, the Tamedia newspapers reported on Peter Burkhard’s project. The Riehen researcher said it was “a long way off” from development. Martin Bachmann in Bern promised a vaccine for October. And Innomedica’s Stefan Halbherr said in mid-April on SRF’s “10vor10” broadcast that he could produce 70 million cans per month at Marly.

But the Swiss were not alone. Intensive research has been carried out around the world on a corona vaccine. There were comparisons to the space race 60 years ago. This was also evident in the names. The Russians called their vaccine Sputnik V, and the Trump administration funded Operation Warp Speed ​​with more than $ 15 billion.

Setbacks

In Switzerland, however, the federal government was reluctant to provide financial support. Peter Burkhard was the first Swiss developer to give up in mid-May. In April, he had injected the vaccine himself in front of the camera, but initial tests with mice were unsuccessful. And the “lone warrior” lacked the money for further research.

In the United States, hundreds of millions of euros would be made available, argued Burkhard in NZZ. “Not a red horse in Switzerland, njet, nothing, nothing.” Then Martin Bachmann was attacked. The “observer” described him as a “man who wants too much.” Tamedia revealed in late June that she had repeatedly promised cures, but had never delivered one.

The Bern immunologist was also fined for insider trading at a startup he founded. Bachmann defended himself from criticism, but lowered his expectations towards Tamedia himself: “We assume that we will have the vaccine available in December.”

In the end, Innomedica also had problems. The antibodies were unable to neutralize the coronavirus in the tests. It was a long way from a Swiss vaccine. The research is in full swing, “but change gears to achieve the goal of a vaccine as quickly as possible; others do,” wrote the “NZZ am Sonntag”.

The downside of location

In addition to the lack of money and luck, there were structural problems. Although Switzerland is a leading pharmaceutical location, it no longer plays a role in vaccine manufacturing. Novartis and Roche have said goodbye to this. Because contrary to the claims of opponents of vaccination, vaccines are not a lucrative business.

The last manufacturer to be sold was Berna Biotech, once a world-famous company, in 2006. Today it belongs to the American company Johnson & Johnson. Its subsidiary Janssen Vaccines is involved in corona vaccine research at its Bern location. Pfizer / Biontech, Moderna and Astrazeneca are in “pole position”.

“The companies and institutes that finally won the day had a lot of what the Swiss had to laboriously organize. They had large research departments and contracts with pharmaceutical giants that were in charge of manufacturing their vaccines, ”NZZ said in their research.

the following steps

The Swiss “pioneers” have not quite given up. Saiba AG, Martin Bachmann’s company, announced in September that it now wanted to develop a “safer and more effective second-generation vaccine after 2020/21”. Lack of financial support from the federal government was blamed for the failure of the original goal.

Innomedica’s Stefan Halbherr is also expecting money from the federal government, as he told the “Berner Zeitung”. At the same time, your company has diversified. She is working on the development of a drug to treat the sometimes serious neurological complications in Covid-19 patients and therefore “has no rival internationally,” Halbherr said.

The dream of the Swiss vaccine is over for now. Zurich cancer researcher Steve Pascolo was upset by this: “We have an army, we have world-class universities, but if we get sick we wait for other countries to sell us vaccines. It is incomprehensible to me that we are dependent there, “he told” NZZ am Sonntag. “