GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Coronavirus: vaccine shortcuts

lunes, 16 de marzo de 2020

BioEdge: Coronavirus: vaccine shortcuts

BioEdge: Coronavirus: vaccine shortcuts

Bioedge

Coronavirus: vaccine shortcuts

by Michael Cook | 14 Mar 2020 |

Shortcuts are being taken in the rush to develop a vaccine for coronavirus, according to an article in STAT. Scientists are not putting their experimental vaccines through animal trials.

“I don’t think proving this in an animal model is on the critical path to getting this to a clinical trial,” says Tal Zaks, of Moderna, a Boston biotech which has already produced a Covid-19 vaccine candidate with innovative technology.

Normally vaccines are tested on animals first, although this is not legally required. Moderna has already started recruiting 18 to 55-year-old human volunteers. They will be paid US$100 per visit, for a total of about $1,100.

“The traditional vaccine timeline is 15 to 20 years. That would not be acceptable here,” said Mark Feinberg, of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. “When you hear predictions about it taking at best a year or a year and a half to have a vaccine available … there’s no way to come close to those timelines unless we take new approaches.”

Not all bioethicists are convinced. “Outbreaks and national emergencies often create pressure to suspend rights, standards and/or normal rules of ethical conduct. Often our decision to do so seems unwise in retrospect,” said Jonathan Kimmelman, director of McGill University’s biomedical ethics unit, in an email to STAT.

It appears that more than 24 coronavirus vaccine candidates are in development globally. It’s good business for Big Pharma. While the share market is tanking around the world, the share price of drug companies which are developing a vaccine have actually shot up, including Moderna.

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge

Most of today’s newsletter is devoted to the coronavirus outbreak. Send us some feedback.

Two countries at the epicentre of the outbreak are particularly interesting in their response to the crisis. Taiwan has reported 50 cases and one death. Even though it is so close to China, Korea and Japan, it has the lowest incidence per capita in the world at the moment — around 1 in every 500,000 people.

The measures Taiwan has taken have been extraordinarily effective – and apparently ignored by the international community. Why? Because Taiwan is not a member of the World Health Organization. It was forced out by the People’s Republic of China for longstanding historical and political reasons. Now the rest of the world is paying the price for WHO’s weakness.

As an op-ed in USA Today argues, Taiwan ought to be admitted to the WHO, even it if puts China’s nose out of joint. “Pandemics don’t care about human politics,” says Mia Ping-Chieh Chen.

The other country is North Korea. “The infectious disease did not flow into our country yet,” says a government newspaper. That is an astonishing achievement – no cases, no deaths. It’s better by far than Taiwan.