The race to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus may already have some laboratories with promising results. According to what has been made known, there is a vaccine for the treatment of COVID-19, developed by the German biotechnology company BioNTech and by the North American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which showed great potential. The vaccine was well tolerated in human trials and brought new hope.
Although some numbers are beginning to show less contagion in Europe, the world remains prostrate before this virus. The pandemic has already killed half a million in more than 10.5 million infected people.
Pfizer could be well positioned in the race for the vaccine against COVID-19
According to information from Reuters, this drug is one of 17 tested on humans, in this frantic global race to find a vaccine the world is counting on to end a pandemic. Thus, the potential treatment is the fourth early-stage drug COVID-19 to be promising in human testing. In addition to this, there are also projects that involve Modern, CanSino Biologics e Inovio Pharmaceuticals.
Despite the focus being on saved human lives, the financial market always reacts with great expectations. As such, BioNTech's shares rose 4.6%, after rising 19%, reaching the highest level in more than three months. Pfizer's shares also rose 4.4% to $ 4.13.
Could BNT162b1 vaccine be the key to freeing the world from the pandemic?
According to BioNTech, the double dose test of its drug BNT162b1 on 24 healthy volunteers showed that, after 28 days, they developed higher levels of COVID-19 antibodies than those normally found in infected people.
The company said that the larger of the two doses - both given through two injections three weeks apart - was followed by a short fever in three of the four participants after the second dose.
A third dosage, tested at a higher concentration in a separate group, was not repeated after the first dose because it caused pain after being administered.
These first test results show that the vaccine produces immune activity and causes a strong immune response.
Explained BioNTech co-founder and CEO Ugur Sahin.
Sahin said that larger trials are being prepared to show whether this translates into protection against a real infection.
Review vaccine results and wait for regulator
As we know, no vaccine to combat COVID-19 has been approved for commercial use. An analysis by MIT last year found that about one in three vaccines in the first stage of testing passes later.
BioNTech said the data demonstrate that the drug BNT162b1 can be administered in a well-tolerated dose, with only temporary side effects. Early-stage vaccine tests on humans are designed to measure certain antibodies and other immune markers in the blood as an indicator of the organism's readiness to fight an infection that then requires further validation.
The pharmaceutical industry is eager to start follow-up tests on a larger scale to see how vaccinated participants react to real infections for longer periods.
BioNTech and Pfizer will now choose the most promising of the four experimental vaccines. This will then be used for a larger study that will involve up to 30,000 healthy participants. This new study is likely to begin in the United States and Europe in late July, if it gets the green light from regulators.
Millions of doses will be manufactured by the end of 2020
If the vaccine eventually gets approved, companies will prepare up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and another 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021 in laboratories in Germany and the United States.
The results of the initial tests of BioNTech's three other potential vaccines have not yet been published. According to the pharmaceutical company, the manuscript with preliminary data from clinical trials, released in April and May, is under peer review for publication in a scientific journal.
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