Jahnavi Sarma
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Written By: Jahnavi Sarma | Published : June 26, 2020 1:10 PM IST
To combat the deadly COVID-19 contagion, scientists are looking at existing drugs and a few clinical trials are in the final stage.
The current global health crisis has left many scientists perplexed. Despite their best efforts, no cure or vaccine was in sight for so many moths since the beginning of the pandemic. But now, there is a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel with many hopeful candidates emerging from the various researchers across the world. Many vaccines are now in the final stages of trials. Some drugs are also being approved for use in the treatment of this deadly contagion. It goes without saying that a vaccine is the only solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, more than 100 potential vaccines are under development around the world to control the pandemic. Experts hope that some cure may be in the market by September this year.
In the face of all this, Moderna and Catalent have announced a collaboration for large-scale, commercial fill-finish manufacturing of Moderna's mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate (mRNA-1273) at Catalent's biologics facility in Bloomington, Indiana. Catalent will provide vial filling and packaging support. It will also provide additional staffing to support the production of an initial 100 million doses of the vaccine candidate from its facility in Bloomington, Indiana in the US. This initial batch is for supply the US market starting in the third quarter of 2020. The two companies are now in discussions to secure fill-finish capacity for continued production of hundreds of millions of additional doses.
mRNA-1273 is an mRNA vaccine candidate against COVID-19 encoding for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike (S) protein. This was selected by Moderna in collaboration with investigators from Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). On June 11, 2020, Moderna made an announcement that enrollment of younger adults (n=300) and the sentinel group of older adults (n=50) in its Phase 2 study of mRNA-1273 was complete. It also said that its Phase 3 study of approximately 30,000 participants, may begin in July 2020.
Catalent will provide clinical supply services from its facilities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including packaging and labelling. It will also provide storage and distribution to support Moderna's Phase 3 clinical study for this candidate. This will facilitate faster delivery of the vaccine. Meanwhile, Catalent has also entered into partnerships with Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca recently for COVID-19 vaccines.
The pandemic shows no signs of abating. After many near misses, scientists are now closer to finding a vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic. There are today many hopeful candidates in the market. The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc.'s promising COVID-19 vaccine is already in the final stages of clinical trials. The company will give the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, or AZD1222, to 10,260 adults and children in the next stage of trials in the UK. Tests are going on in South Africa and Brazil on volunters.
Meanwhile, China's Sinovac Biotech Vaccine is testing an inactivated vaccine called CoronaVac. Preparations for Phase III trials are going on in China and Brazil. Phase I and II trials in China gave promising results. Clover Biopharmaceuticals has also announced the start of human trials of its innovative vaccine, COVID-19 S-Trimer sub-unit vaccine candidate (SCB-2019). Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is co-producing a vaccine along with Germany's BNTECH and they have already started the process of dosing patients in Germany and the US. The company is hopeful that their vaccine may be ready by the end of October 2020.
