70 Corona Vaccines are on the way. Image Courtesy – The New York Times
The World Health Organization declared that around 70 vaccines for coronavirus are in process of development and the pharmaceutical companies are running with competitions to find a perfect cure for the deadly pathogen.
The CanSino Biologics of Hong Kong and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology of China are going through the vaccine development process and they are in phase II. The US drug makers and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are also trying to come up with new vaccine.
The development of a vaccine is occurring at exceptional speed because the deadly virus looks unlikely to be engraved out only through containment measures. The pharmaceutical industry usually takes 10 to 15 years to promote a vaccine into the market. But, in this case, the time period is being forced to curtail by near about 1 year.
Read: Vaccine for COVID-19 will be available by 2021
According to the statement of the World Health Organization, almost 15-20 pharmaceutical companies have jumped into the development of coronavirus vaccine. Big companies like Sanofi and Pfizer have their vaccine candidates in pre-clinical stages.
According to the WHO statement, CanSino has received regulatory approval of China administration in the last month to start human trials for its vaccine. Moderna, a US-based company, got regulatory approval from the government, skipping the long process of animal trials that has always been a rule in preparing a vaccine. Though Moderna has never put out a product, it started human trials after getting the approval in the last month. Inovio Pharmaceuticals of the US has also started its human trials last week.
Novavax, a Maryland based biotech company of US stated in an interview that it would start human trials of its vaccine candidate in Australia in the next month. Novavax is one of the reputed companies that has made an announcement for fast development of vaccine preparation which they have never done before.
