COVID-19 Vaccine: around 170 vaccines are in development know who are the frontrunners

Some 170 COVID-19 vaccines are in development around the world, according to the World Health Organization, each one promising to protect people from the deadly coronavirus and allow them to go back to work and school.

Now, a handful are starting or nearing the final stage of testing. Depending on the results, some companies say their vaccines could be green lighted for use as soon as this year.

The Front-Runners Among the first vaccine candidates to start the final round of testing is one developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC. Also far along are experimental shots from Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE, as well as Moderna Inc.

China National Pharmaceutical Group Co., or Sinopharm, has a vaccine in Phase 3. A vaccine from another Chinese company, CanSino Biologics, is expected to begin the pivotal testing soon. But remember, many vaccines that show promise in early testing fail during the final round.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is designed to provide protection by delivering into a person’s cells the genetic code for the spikes protruding from the new coronavirus. Then the cells can produce the spike proteins, generating an immune response that would be able to fight off the coronavirus. Delivering those genetic instructions is a weakened, harmless version of a virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees.

In early testing, the vaccine successfully produced immune responses in humans with only minor side effects. A Phase 3 trial enrolling 30,000 subjects in the U.S. began in August. Other late-stage trials are under way with several thousand volunteers in the U.K., Brazil and South Africa.

Production capacity estimate: AstraZeneca aims to make two billion doses available world-wide, and has said that one billion may be available this year.

The Moderna vaccine also uses a gene-based technology to provoke an immune response, though the code it delivers takes the form of messenger RNA. Those molecules, commonly referred to as mRNA, are the body’s molecular couriers ferrying DNA instructions for making proteins. The vaccine delivers to cells mRNA for making the coronavirus’s spike protein.

Moderna and the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are testing a two-dose shot. It was the first candidate to enter human testing in the U.S. The vaccine produced an immune response in early-stage testing and was generally well-tolerated, with minor side effects observed in test subjects.

Final-stage testing is under way in the U.S. with a 30,000-person trial that could yield interim results in the fall. An mRNA vaccine has never been approved for any disease.

Johnson & Johnson is developing a vaccine that uses a weakened form of a common-cold virus, known as an adenovirus. A single dose of this vaccine provoked a strong immune response in early animal testing. The company plans to launch by late September a 60,000-person global study, which could be the largest late-stage clinical trial of a Covid-19 vaccine. The company will carry out the study at nearly 180 locations in the U.S. and eight other countries where transmission rates are high, including Brazil, Chile and South Africa.

Production capacity estimate: one billion world-wide by the end of 2021, including 100 million doses for the U.S., with an option for an additional 200 million, and 30 million doses for the U.K., with an option for an additional purchase of up to 22 million.

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