opinion: why do vaccines take so long?

here in ontario, a multidisciplinary team of western university researchers in london are working on the development of a covid-19 vaccine based on constructs developed for an hiv vaccine. the work is being done in western’s imaging pathogens for knowledge translation (impakt) facility which contains canada’s newest containment level 3 facility and state-of-the-art imaging equipment that will allow the researchers to safely study the virus in detail.

in seattle, washington, a new clinical trial for a potential coronavirus vaccine recently began at kaiser permenente washington health research institute. the vaccine was developed quickly by massachusetts-based moderna inc, and is the first to be tested in humans.

a vaccine trial is very different from a therapeutic trial. in a therapeutic trial, patients are administered a drug and monitored for improvement of the illness. but in a vaccine trial, a researchers needs to prove that a person would have gotten sick if the vaccine wasn’t administered. that’s a more difficult fact to prove. of course, infecting a healthy person with the virus to test the vaccine is out of the question, so the alternative is to give the vaccine to a large number of people (hundreds or thousands) and track to see if infection rates differ compared to a placebo population over a period of time. in the case of covid-19, if the trial is successful, it will likely be approved quickly because there is an urgent unmet need and no other competing vaccine. however, it can take time to ramp up production of the vaccine to deliver the millions of doses needed to protect people globally.

a team of researchers from sunnybrook, mcmaster university and the university of toronto recently isolated the covid-19 virus which will help researchers develop better diagnostic testing, treatments and vaccines.

winnipeg’s emergent biosolutions is working on an oral vaccine that would be both a therapeutic and prophylactic by giving the patients a dose of anti-covid antibodies. the company is partnering with two companies in the u.s. to accelerate development. clinical trials are expected to begin in the late summer.

entos pharmacueticals, an edmonton-based company, is developing a dna-based vaccine for covid-19. the company is planning to have a vaccine ready for trials within a few weeks.

a company from china, cansino biologic, is about to start their first trial. cansino biologic’s approach involves taking a piece of coronavirus’ genetic information and encoding it in a harmless virus. in this approach, they are exposing healthy volunteers to that harmless virus in the hope of generating immunity. they have received regulatory approval and will start the trial soon.

second, when we have a treatment that works. this is the top priority for the research and clinical trials community, with governments around the world supporting the effort. in canada, the federal government recently announced $275 million to support researchers and companies working to find solutions, including potential vaccines and treatments.

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