With China, South Korea and Italy in full on pandemics, and most of the rest of the world preparing for it, which companies are making Coronavirus vaccines?
These timely biotechs include:
and have seen hikes of up to 50% in their stock prices.
The question is whether they can make it at scale and test it in trials quick enough to be useful. Traditionally it takes years to get through such trials although regular updates for the ‘Flu occur each season.
But starting from scratch?
Well, some academic and biotech labs are claiming to be close to vaccines for the COVID-19 outbreak including an Australian attempt that is only days away from animal testing and human trials for US related SARS vaccines are only 5 weeks away.
What’s actually involved in developing a vaccine?
Vaccine’s of course work on the principal of inoculating as much as possible of the population against something that looks and feels like the virus but doesn’t make people sick.
Your immune system is then ready for the real thing when or if it arrives.
A vastly weakened or totally inactive virus or part of the virus is somehow generated, preferably of the latter variety. Most recently a non-functional part for the virus, such as a protein from the virus’ outer sheath is used. It is generated in quantity and tested in lab experiments and animal and human trials.
There’s huge potential to speed up the way its done and some of these companies listed above are at the forefront.
I personally suspect there is more to be done in this area and recommend keeping an eye on biotechs that announce new approaches to rapid vaccine development.
Anybody else remember Dustin Hoffman doing it in a a few days in Outbreak? Or how many times did Dr Mccoy or Dr Crusher come up with overnight cures in Star Trek?
But seriously, the fundamental technology is well understood and not ridiculously complicated. I wonder what could be done to speed up development & testing?
Or is it a regulatory problem?
How often do draft vaccines actually generate harm? Can AI predict which ones?
Come on . . let’s work this issue.
Who knows some of these answers already?
Got any ideas?
This is a science blog too. And it’s two-way.
Image credit: NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories | Wikipedia
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