The French Sanofi takes an important step in its anti-Covid-19 vaccine project. After months of delay, it is finally starting large-scale trials, the last step before a launch promised for the end of the year.
Sanofi and the British GSK, which supplies it with its adjuvant, “are starting an international phase 3 study to assess the effectiveness of their candidate vaccine against (the) Covid-19”, the French group said in a statement Thursday, ten days after the announcement of encouraging results after initial trials.
The latter, carried out on a few hundred people, showed that this vaccine causes the production of antibodies against the coronavirus in most of the subjects to which it has been injected.
But it is the trials announced this Thursday that should give a real idea of the effectiveness against Covid-19 of this vaccine, for which GSK provides the adjuvant. They will be carried out with some 35,000 people in multiple countries, including the United States.
Objective for Sanofi: a launch at the end of 2021. Already communicated by the group, this schedule would bring its product to the market almost a year after the first vaccines approved against Covid-19.
Among the latter, there are vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson in the Western world, as well as AstraZeneca in Europe. More broadly, in the world, Russian Sputnik V and Chinese Sinovac vaccines also play an important role in vaccination campaigns.
– As a booster dose? –
The late arrival of Sanofi is explained by dysfunctions in the development of its vaccine, which suffered a setback of several months.
This setback had sparked controversy in France, where neither public research nor private research have yet succeeded in marketing an anti-Covid vaccine. But, since then, the group continues to ensure that its product will find its place all the same.
“We have adapted the development strategy of our vaccine to take into account the constant evolution of the virus and to anticipate the needs that will emerge after the pandemic”, insisted Thomas Triomphe, vice-president of Sanofi, in the press release. from Thursday.
As such, the group will play on two levels. First, it will test a form of its updated vaccine against the so-called South African variant of the virus, one of the main new strains that have appeared in recent months.
Then, Sanofi will also assess whether its product works as a booster dose after another vaccine, a way of integrating into vaccination campaigns that could occur regularly in the face of mutations in the virus.
Like the main vaccines in circulation, with the notable exception of Johnson & Johnson, that of Sanofi will require the injection of two successive doses.
It is also a recombinant protein vaccine, a technology different from the vaccines currently distributed even if it is also that of a vaccine being developed by the American Novavax.
Sanofi is also working on another vaccine, messenger RNA like those of Pfizer and Moderna, but is at a less advanced stage than its other project.
Finally, it has made agreements with other manufacturers – Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna – to help them bottle their vaccines.
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