On the Horizon

What’s the Difference?

It’s important to note that a vaccine and a cure are very different. A vaccine is a preventive product that protects people against a certain disease. A cure involves treating infected patients to help eliminate the diseases from their system. Currently, COVID-19 does not have a vaccine or a cure.

The Three Major Steps

Phase 1: Exploration

In this stage, drug companies play with different approaches to developing a vaccine. This phase normally takes two to four years. Because COVID-19 is similar to the first SARS virus, however, researchers have a head start.

Phase 2: Preclinical

After possible vaccine candidates are identified, each one is tested in cell cultures and animals to see if it triggers an immune response.

“If there’s no immune response or the vaccine is causing harm to cells, then it’s back to square one,” says Yasmin in the same article. “The reality is there is no way to speed up this stage, and it will probably take at least a year (for COVID-19).”

Phase 3: Clinical trials

After a vaccine candidate passes the clinical trials, it will be given to a small group of people. After that, progressively larger groups of people will receive the vaccine.

These phases normally take years to complete, but some bioethicists have recently proposed that because COVID-19 is so serious, challenge trials may be considered to accelerate the process, according to experts at the World Health Organization. In a challenge trial, researchers intentionally infect the volunteers they vaccinate in a controlled environment to see if the vaccine effectively produces immunity.

“The potential value of doing (challenge trials for COVID-19) is amplified above almost any other case you can think of,” says Seema Shah, a medical ethicist at Northwestern University and Laurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in an article for WIRED Magazine. “So, even though we’d be crossing a boundary that’s been in place for a very long time, we think there’s enough reason to start investing in laying the groundwork for (challenge trials) now.”

Vaccine development for COVID-19 has already started. According to Healthline, officials at the National Institutes of Health recently said that large scale testing could begin as early as July with a vaccine available as soon as January 2021.

According to Healthline, major vaccine development projects that are currently underway as of late May include:

Moderna. This Seattle, Washington, company just announced that its mRNA-based vaccine has successfully produced COVID-19 antibodies in all 45 trial participants in the initial clinical phase of development.

Inovio. When COVID-19 appeared in December 2019, this company had already been working on a DNA vaccine for MERS, which gave them a head start in producing a COVID-19 vaccine. It’s currently preparing to start a phase 2/3 trial this summer.

University of Oxford. The University of Oxford in England started a clinical trial with more than 500 participants in late April 2020. Oxford officials said that its potential vaccine has an 80 percent chance for success and could be available as early as September. Its vaccine uses a modified version of the virus to trigger the patient’s immune system.

Emily Real is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@ cityscenemediagroup.com.