Beur schreef op 30 maart 2020 17:03:
J&J has zeroed in on a Covid-19 vaccine candidate that it hopes to begin testing in humans by September this year —
with the extraordinary goal of getting it ready for emergency use in early 2021. And together with BARDA, it’s committing $1 billion to make it happen.
That kind of accelerated timeline would fall on the fast side of NIAID director Anthony Fauci’s well-publicized prediction that it would be another 12 to 18 months before a vaccine can be available for public use. A Phase I trial of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine began two weeks ago, and both the biotech and fellow mRNA player CureVac have discussed similar, if not even faster, timelines for emergency use among healthcare workers.
The J&J candidate (as well as two other backups) was created on an adenovirus vector-based platform in a collaboration between its
Janssen unit and researchers at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. They began working with multiple constructs back in January, the company added, selecting the ones producing the largest immune response in preclinical experiments. Initial safety and efficacy data are available by the end of the year.
According to the website, the technology used here has been deployed during the Ebola epidemic.
With production to begin imminently, the company is also scaling up its global manufacturing capacity so that it will eventually be able to supply 1 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine, which will be affordable and available “on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use.”
Officials have long appealed for Big Pharma to lend their muscles to the frantic vaccine race. Even though Moderna has begun work to create millions of doses, demand around the world will likely be higher by multiple factors.
In addition to a prophylactic, J&J said it’s also expanding its partnership with BARDA, or Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, on its antiviral work. Scientists in Belgium are helping screen its and others’ compound libraries. Undisclosed additional funding has been poured into this project.
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En ja hoor het wordt nu groots aangepakt door de grootste farmaceut ter wereld. En zoals ik al suggereerde: "ons" Janssen Biologics uit Leiden - op steenworpafstand van Gala en Pharming - speelt een voorname rol!