Merck aims to start human trials on one of its COVID-19 vaccine candidates ‘fairly soon,’ with a second vaccine candidate likely to begin trials later this year, Chief Executive Kenneth Frazier said on Thursday.
It comes as competitors Moderna, Pfizer, And AstraZeneca gather data in their already-underway final stage human studies and federal officials instruct states to prepare for one of two unnamed vaccines to be ready by the end of October.
Dr Anthony Fauci has said that that it’s unlikely but ‘conceivable’ that a vaccine could be ready by then, but Pfizer’s CEO confirmed Thursday that the company could be ready to file for FDA approval as soon as late-October.
Merk’s higher-ups have stalwartly maintained that the company would take its time to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Despite extensive experience making shots, it has lagged considerably – and, its executives say, intentionally – behind competitors.
The White House insisted on Thursday that it is not putting pressure on companies or on the FDA to quickly approve COVID-19 shots, and Merck does not appear to be bowing to any as it keeps to its own timeline to test its two vaccines.
Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier said Thursday that the company’s experimental coronavirus vaccines (it’s developing two) will be ready to move to human trials ‘fairly soon’ (file)
Merck this year bought Austrian vaccine maker Themis Bioscience to gain its vaccine project that relies on a measles vector, and is also collaborating with research nonprofit IAVI on a second vaccine hopeful that uses the same technology as Merck’s Ebola vaccine ERVEBO.
‘Both of those are going forward,’ Frazier said during a virtual briefing sponsored by drug industry group International Federation of Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Association.
‘We expect to be able to start larger-scale human trials in the measles-virus vaccine fairly soon, and we expect to be able to start those clinical trials for the [IAVI vaccine] later this year.’
Merck did not properly join the coronavirus vaccine race until May when it announced that it was working on an experimental COVID-19 treatment and not one, but two coronavirus vaccines.
Frazier has been insistent that Merck, a successful vaccine maker before the pandemic, will not rush its development of coronavirus vaccines (pictured: Frazier testifying before a Senate committee in February)
Companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna jumped to work on vaccines as early as March, in Pfizer’s and J&J’s cases, and January in Moderna’s.
Merck received $38 million in vaccine development funding from the US government to fund its work on coronavirus vaccines.
However, the US has not yet signed a contract with the company to purchase its shot.
The White House has inked deals with J&J, Pfizer, Moderna, Astrazeneca, as well as with partnered companies Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for 100 million or more doses of each of their vaccines.
Merck’s, then, is the last of the six vaccines tapped by the US government as leading candidates over the last several months still standing without a contract.
Despite lagging behind the other companies in these respects, the Merck jab is being watched with great anticipation by vaccine experts, in part due to its monumental success in developing a shot for the last grave epidemic of a inspire global fear: Ebola.
CEO Frazier’s tease of soon-to-come human trials is promising, but it’s all but certain that it’s shot is not one of the two unnamed candidates referred to in the CDC’s instructions for states to be ready the arrival of vaccines at the of next month.
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