Sanofi/ GSK delay COVID-19 vaccine after disappointing trials
Shafaq News/ Sanofi and Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline said on Friday they will test their potential COVID-19 vaccine further after clinical trials showed an insufficient immune response in older people, delaying its potential launch until the end of next year.
Reuters stated the two companies saying they planned to start another study next February, hoping to come up with a more effective vaccine by the end of 2021, in a blow to efforts to fight the pandemic.
The news comes as a disappointment for one of a crop of vaccines under development that rely on more conventional proven designs as the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech using breakthrough technology gets rolled out across Britain.
It is also a blow for many governments, including the European Union, the United States, Canada and Britain, which have booked hundreds of millions of doses of the shot as they struggle to tame the virus which has killed more than 1.5 million people and crushed economies.
Friday’s results showed “an immune response comparable to patients who recovered from COVID-19 in adults aged 18 to 49 years, but a low immune response in older adults likely due to an insufficient concentration of the antigen,” France’s Sanofi said.
The Sanofi-GSK vaccine uses the same recombinant protein-based technology as one of Sanofi’s seasonal influenza vaccines. It will be coupled with an adjuvant, a substance that acts as a booster to the vaccine, made by GSK.
