Sanofi's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine prospect not ready this season, CEO says
15 February, 2021
A good COVID-19 vaccine candidate produced by Sanofi and US group Translate Bio "will never be ready this season", the French drugmaker's leader told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
Clinical trials of the vaccine, which is predicated on a technology referred to as mRNA - which lean authorized vaccines of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna - are anticipated to get started on this quarter.
In December this past year, Sanofi had said it had been targeting "earliest potential approval" of the shot in the next half of 2021, following confident preclinical data.
"This vaccine will not be ready this year, but it could be of use at a later on stage all the more if the fight against variants was to continue," Paul Hudson was quoted as saying.
The CEO gave no other specifics. Officials at Sanofi were not available for comment.
The news could tag another blow for Sanofi, already embattled with a delay for another COVID-19 vaccine prospect it hopes to bring to patients and that the company has teamed up with Britain's GlaxoSmithKline.
Both groups stunned investors last year by warning their traditional, protein-based COVID-19 jab showed an insufficient immune response in the elderly, delaying its start towards the finish of 2021.
To appease critics, Sanofi said last month it had decided to load and pack millions of doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from July.
Some 108 million persons have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and a lot more than 2.4 million have passed away since first cases had been identified in China in December 2019, regarding to a Reuters tally.
Countries worldwide have because the beginning of the yr embarked on mass vaccination programmes, with mixed effects, and are now confronted with the emergence of several variant strains which forces them to move even more quickly.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
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