The research sounds promising. Dr. Andrea Gambotto has been working on Coronavirus since SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV outbreaks.
I hope the FDA slashes the red tape and allows clinical human trials. The 2nd wave of Covid-19 is expected later this summer. A vaccine would save lives and the world’s economies.
Press conference announcement.
The news video at the top of the page summaries the research done.
The red tape also saves lives. Yeah, this vaccine is probably safe… but you want to know for sure, before you go and inject it into half the population.
This isn’t even the first vaccine developed for this virus. Pretty much every biomedical research lab on the globe is working on it, and several have made progress faster than this. But they all need to be tested, because if there’s not, there’s the chance we could make things worse, not better.
I’m feeling more confident that a vaccine will be developed. The best and brightest minds in the world are getting close to an answer.
The Pitt study sounds very promising. But we can’t get too excited until the human clinical trials. Does it work? Side effects? Is it safe! There’s a lot of questions to answer.
The 2nd wave of Covid-19 has me really worried. This first round is projected to kill 100,000 in the US. We need a vaccine before round 2.
Yeah we will get a vaccine, but I keep hearing 12-18 months until it is proven safe and effective.
The problem is a vaccine that only partially matches the antigens of a pathogen can make the disease worse rather than better.
Thanks for pointing this out. I’m starting to feel like a broken record, but this is important and none of the reporting ever goes into it. This is a really big deal.
That red tape is there because without it, people die- OR WORSE- MUCH WORSE
There is some prioritization that can be done to speed things up. There might be some requirements that can be waived, with very careful consideration first. But every one of those regs represents some time something went terribly wrong.
I’ve worked with the FDA (as a sponsor, not employee) and they aren’t stupid or deaf. I am sure they are doing everything they can.
I keep hearing this too, for three months. Shouldn’t we at 9-15 now?
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but SARS was 17 years ago. Call me crazy, but if the research was that good, I would have expected vaccine trials by now. But what do I know?
When the danger of SARS went away, much of the funding for a SARS vaccines also went away. This is the type of thing that is pointed to when people talk about not being prepared for a pandemic. No private company wants to develop a vaccine there is no market for, and a vaccine against last decade’s epidemic doesn’t seem that profitable. There are government programs which promise to buy vaccines even if they don’t treat a current threat, but it can be hard to find funding for something that isn’t currently a problem.
The 12-18 months also includes manufacturing. Typically manufacturing issues wouldn’t be addressed until the vaccine had passed several stages of trials. No point in figuring out how to mass produce something if it doesn’t work. This is one of the things that will speed up the process. They will be working on production issues at the same time trials are being conducted for potential SARS-2 vaccines. Then, if the vaccine is safe and effective, it can be put into production quickly. Depending on the exact type of vaccine, it will still take months to produce enough to vaccinate the world.
Just as we can quickly come up with vaccines for different strains of the influenza virus, hopefully one thing that will come out of this, possibly not as the first vaccine, but later, is a standard corona virus vaccine blueprint. Then when a new one emerges, the factories can be in production before the first cruise ship docks.
Maybe? But probably not. The 12-18 month thing was assuming some corners were cut and something popped up almost immediately.
It’s basically “if all the stars align and manna fell from the heaven, we might have something workable” kind of estimate. Maybe it will be more like 9-15 and I’m hoping it is, but I’m also not holding my breath.
Each virus is different, even if they are all coronaviruses. Look at all the annual effort we put into the flu vaccine, and we get the mix wrong on that much of the time. Extra knowledge about helps, but that’s no guarantee.
Also, there already ARE trials ongoing. But it’ll still be at least a year, at minimum, for the trials to determine if potential treatments are safe and/or effective and to get manufacturing up to speed. And that’s with shortcuts.
A candidate vaccine is just a candidate. If it doesn’t pan out, it means something else has to be tried, which is extra time. To get something in as little as a year, as I mentioned above, everything has to line up correctly on the first go.
The University of Pittsburgh? That’s where Dr. Jonas Salk worked when he and his staff discovered the vaccine for polio. As one who was born in 1950 just the word polio put terror into my mother’s demeanor. Even as someone under age 5, I could feel that.
So let’s go you Pitt Panthers Med School. You’re uniquely qualified to finding this current vaccine based on experience.
When will a coronavirus vaccine be ready? (Guardian today)
My emphasis. Eighteen months. Hang on.