UK Edition
Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna have won approval for their Covid vaccines from the UK regulator and the jabs are already being rolled out. But what about the other vaccine candidates and how soon will they come to market?
Our list offers a snapshot of what the vaccine landscape looks like.
The life sciences industry’s response to the pandemic has been unprecedented both in terms of the speed at which it has developed vaccines and its willingness to collaborate with rivals. That has resulted in 237 potential vaccines, of which 64 are in human clinical trials.
That's great news as, in the vaccines business there is often no "one-size-fits-all" solution, with different countries requiring different sorts of vaccines based on a range of variables including climate, land mass and demography. In other words: there is plenty of room in the market for more than one vaccine.
Covid vaccines approved by the UK
Pfizer/BioNtech
UK approval date: December 2, 2020
Doses: 2
Efficacy: 90pc +
Type: mRNA
Doses sold or pre-ordered globally: The total sum is undisclosed, but we know it has 300m on order from the EU and 200m from the US, which, together with the UK, brings the total to 540m
Doses procured by the UK: 40m
Manufacturing capability: Up to 2bn doses this year
AstraZeneca/Oxford University
UK approval date: December 30, 2020
Dosage: 2
Efficacy: 70pc on average
Type: AAV (non-replicating viral vector)
Doses sold or pre-ordered globally: Undisclosed, but it has agreements with various countries to supply 700m doses and to supply 1bn to low and middle-income countries
Doses procured by the UK: 100m
Manufacturing capability: 3bn doses a year
AAV works by taking an inert common cold virus from a chimp and inserting a coronavirus spike protein into it. When this is injected into a patient, it primes the body’s immune system to recognise the protein so that when transmission occurs, it attacks the coronavirus.
AstraZeneca has set up supply chains and manufacturing facilities all over the world, including the UK. It has already signed a supply agreement with the Government to sell the vaccine at a not-for-profit price during the pandemic stage. “We have treated this as a public health emergency, not a business opportunity,” says a spokesman.
Moderna
UK approval date: January 8, 2021
Doses: 2
Efficacy: 90pc+
Type: mRNA
Doses sold or pre-ordered globally: More than 730m
Doses procured by the UK: 17m
Manufacturing capability: 600m-1bn a year, with 100m-125m available in first quarter of 2021
Moderna was founded on the basis of using messenger RNA (mRNA) to cure disease and develop vaccines. Of the 100m-125m doses available this quarter, 85m-100m of those are earmarked for the US, with the balance for the rest of the world.
Vaccines to watch:
Janssen
Trial status: Phase III
Doses: 1
Efficacy: Pivotal phase III trial data is expected by the end of the month
Type: AAV
Doses sold or pre-ordered globally: undisclosed
Doses procured by the UK: 30m
Manufacturing capability: 1bn in 2021
Janssen is based in Belgium but owned by Johnson & Johnson. If its trial data is positive, Janssen will apply for approval from regulators in early February. Janssen is well-versed in vaccines. It has created vaccines for Ebola, Zika virus and RSV and is using the same platform, called AdVac, to develop the covid jab.
Novavax
Trial status: Phase III
Dosage: 2
Efficacy: Pivotal phase III data from UK and US trials expected by the end of March
Type: Protein subunit
Doses sold or pre-ordered globally: More than 300m, and 1bn to low and middle-income countries
Doses procured by the UK: 60m
Manufacturing capability: 1bn-2bn in 2021
Another American company, Novavax is in final stage trials with its drug, having started in September, so the vaccine could be rolled out by the beginning of April. Before the pandemic, the company was in financial difficulty on the back of failed vaccines and was even facing the possibility of being delisted from the stock market. Now it is one of just seven Covid vaccine makers to win funding from the US government and could receive up to $2bn in total. Novavax has 15,000 volunteers in its UK-based trial.
GSK with Sanofi Pasteur
Trial status: Phase I/II
Dosage: 1
Efficacy: n/a
Type: Protein subunit
Doses sold or pre-ordered globally: At least 732m
Doses procured by the UK: 60m
Manufacturing capability: Too early to say, but Sanofi says it is "mobilising manufacturing capabilities to quickly deliver large quantities of future vaccine".
Britain’s GSK is providing its adjuvant technology to several pharmaceutical companies that are developing a Covid vaccine, including China’s Clover and France’s Sanofi Pasteur.
GSK, a big vaccine player in its own right, is a specialist in adjuvants - chemicals that improve the efficacy of vaccines by turbo-charging them. Sanofi’s vaccine is designed around a protein sub-unit and based on existing technology it uses for its flu vaccine.
This sort of vaccine works by presenting the body with parts of a dead virus so that it can recognise and attack the real thing. Sanofi suffered a setback last month, however, following a dosing error in its trials. That means the earliest it hopes to get the vaccine approved and deployed is by the end of the year, rather than by July.
Other notable vaccine contenders:
Curevac: Phase III
Medigen/Dynavax: Phase II/III
Clover/GSK: Phase II/III
Medicago: Phase II/III (plant-based vaccines)
*Global orders and pre-orders are only those that we are aware of. Conversations and agreements are happening all the time
Vaccine candidates that have been scrapped
Merck/MSD Trial status reached: Phase I
Doses: 1
Efficacy: n/a
Type: AAV
Merck, known as MSD outside the US, dropped out of the race to find a Covid vaccine after its jab failed to generate enough of an immune response in early-stage clinical trials.
It had few side effects but the immune response was weaker than that immune response generated by patients who had not received a vaccine and had contracted covid.