PARIS (FRANCE) – Pharmaceutical firm Sanofi SA said on Tuesday it expects to get sanction for the potential COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline Plc by the first half of next year.
Sanofi and GSK had said in April the vaccine, if successful, would be available in the second half of 2021.
“We are being guided by our dialogue with regulatory authorities,” Sanofi research chief John Reed told reporters.
At present, there are no vaccines to prevent the coronavirus that has infected more than 9 million people and killed over 469,000 across the world. Only a couple of medicines have shown effect on hospitalised COVID patients in clinical trials.
Moderna Inc, the University of Oxford in collaboration with AstraZeneca Plc, and an alliance of BioNTech and Pfizer Inc had moved to human trials as early as March.
“There are companies moving faster, but let us be brutally clear, speed has three downsides,” he said of competition.
“They are using existing work, in many cases done for SARS; it is likely not to be as efficacious; and there is no guarantee on supply in large volumes,” Hudson said.
The probability of success for Sanofi is “higher than anybody else,” the CEO said.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field