Johnson & Johnson: COVID-19's vaccine will be ready by 2021
American pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson has announced that it has selected the lead vaccine candidate for the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. The company says that the experimental vaccine is expected to go into human trials by September 2020 and might become available for emergency use by early next year. Here's all you need to know about it.
What we know about this vaccine?
J&J began working on the vaccine candidate in question, dubbed Ad26 SARS-CoV-2, back in January using the same technology it had employed to develop a vaccine for Ebola. It uses a killed strain of the novel coronavirus that causes the disease and strives to generate an immune response in the patient's body to fight the disease.
Early indicators suggest it will be safe and effective
Speaking to CNBC, J&J CEO Alex Gorsky said, "We have very good early indicators that not only can we depend on this to be a safe vaccine base but also one that will ultimately be effective based on all the early testing and modeling." "This is a bit of a moonshot for J&J..., but it's one we feel is very, very important," he added.
No word on market price yet
J&J expects to receive clinical data on the effects of the vaccine by the end of the year, leading to its emergency use sometime in 2021. Gorsky said the company is pursuing the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis but declined to estimate how much it might cost. He also added they have two back-ups in case the lead candidate doesn't work well.
Goal to supply over 1 billion doses
In addition to this, J&J is also investing over $1 billion in partnership with the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to co-fund research on COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatments. The report also says that it is expanding its global manufacturing capacity in the US and beyond, to produce and supply more than a billion doses of the vaccine once it's ready.
Other vaccine efforts also underway
Along with Johnson & Johnson, China's CanSinoBIO and US pharmaceutical company Moderna are also racing to get the COVID-19 vaccine ready, with the phase I human trials already underway. So far, coronavirus has infected nearly 8 lakh and killed over 37,000 worldwide.
