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Summary
- Equity markets across the globe turned jubilant on hopes about the early improvement on the pandemic front
- The USFDA approval for the AstraZeneca candidate ahead of its American contender, Moderna's much-hyped candidate, raises hoped of massive revenues for the company from the world’s largest market of drugs.
- The AstraZeneca vaccine candidate being prepared by the Jenner Institute of Oxford University is in the most advanced stage of its development compared to its most other competitors being developed around the world.
- This latest action and the approval for convalescent plasma therapy in the United States has raised hopes that the infection numbers in the country will now come down significantly.
As the days come near for the launch of the AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccine ChAdOx1 nCovid-19 countries around the world have been doing all they can to lay their hands on it. The latest one is the United States of America, whose federal drug administrator the USFDA (the US Food and Drug Administration has given approval to the vaccine for the inoculation of American people. For the company which has already signed several agreements around the world for the distribution and administration of this vaccine, this approval is a special one as it opens the doors of the worlds, largest drug market for the company. The reaction of this news on the London Stock Exchange was as expected, the FTSE 100 index of which AstraZeneca is a constituent jumped 100 points in trading, while the stock of AstraZeneca rallied by 4.1 per cent through the day. The coronavirus pandemic has gripped the world for more than six months now and has caused extensive damage to both advanced as well as low-and-mid-income economies. It is widely expected that once most of the world population receives this vaccine, the healthcare threat levels will come down significantly leading to an early resumption of day to day business activity.
The market reaction to the USFDA approvals
The two approvals of the FDA- for the convalescent plasma therapy and the ChAdOx1 nCovid-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca- has raised hopes in the world capital markets about the early improvement on the pandemic front. The Asian markets, the European markets as well as the US markets all rallied after this news. For the US, it seems to be timed well, keeping in view the re-election prospects of President Trump in the month of November this year.
The AstraZeneca vaccine
AstraZeneca was able to sign a deal with one of the earliest developers of the coronavirus vaccine. The University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute is leading an effort from as early as January of this year to find a vaccine for the viral illness. The University has produced a vaccine which currently has the code name ChAdOx1 nCovid-19 which showed promising results in its first trials on chimpanzees. The research group at the institute was able to demonstrate that the chimpanzees when they were vaccinated with this vaccine did not show their lungs getting damaged by this virus nor was this virus able to replicate there, however, it continued to multiply in their throat cavity. Encouraged by this finding, the institute has now advanced it into the second stage, and third stage trials where it is experimenting on thousands of humans from different races and age groups to see if this success can be replicated there. In the meantime, AstraZeneca and several of its partner companies have already manufactured billions of doses of this vaccine so that by the time it completes all its approval processes there would be no lead time in its mass availability to the general public. Both the company and Oxford University have been maintaining that the vaccine will be available by the month of September this year.
Other vaccine candidates in the UK and around the world
In the UK, the government entered into a second agreement other than AstraZeneca for the supply of the vaccine. British pharma giant GSK and Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical giant, also has a vaccine candidates in the development stage for the coronavirus pandemic. This candidate which is being developed by Sanofi in association with GSK aims at making millions of doses of a powerful vaccine which both partners hope to roll out to the public as early as 2021. The candidate who is a little different than the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate, is an Adjuvanted Vaccine, meaning that there are added boosters in the vaccine that prompts the human immune system to produce more antibodies than it would otherwise do if only the vaccine is given to target population. The antigen that will be used for the vaccine is based on recombinant DNA technology that could lead to a superior human immune response compared to the Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine. Moreover, what makes this candidate strongly placed amongst all other COVID- 19 vaccine candidates, is that it is being supported by Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), of the US through funding and collaboration.
Incidentally, Sanofi is also developing a medicine against COVID 19 along with American pharmaceutical company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals which aims as repurposing rheumatoid arthritis drug Kevzara to treat patients with severe COVID-19.
Other than the above there are a number of vaccine candidates under development in various countries against COVID 19, some of the prominent candidates are.
- The Moderna, mRNA-1273 candidate – Moderna, an American drug development company is working on an RNA based COVID- 19 vaccine. The company's candidate who is set to enter into its third phase of clinical trials in July will see nearly 30,000 volunteers participating in the trials. The company, along with its partner Catalent Inc plans to make 100 million doses of the vaccine for the American market.
- CanSino Ad5-nCoV candidate – A Chinese vaccine development candidate, it is being developed by CanSino Biologics Inc in association with Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. The candidate is a Recombinant vaccine and has already started its phase- 1 and phase- 2 human trials with results showing a strong immune response to the pandemic virus.
- Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine candidate – This vaccine candidate is being developed by a joint venture between American drug maker Pfizer and German pharma company BioNTech. It is an mRNA-based vaccine and is currently being tested on volunteers in the United States and Germany, showing a strong immunological response to the virus.
- Inovio Pharmaceuticals/International Vaccine Institute candidate – Unlike other vaccine candidates, this is an experimental DNA based vaccine which has shown promising results in early human stage trials. This vaccine candidate is currently undergoing Phase- 1 and Phase- 2 clinical trials in the US.
