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By Ludwig Burger
FRANKFURT, June 19 (Reuters) - There is a notable name
missing from the frontrunners in the race to test experimental
immunisations against the novel coronavirus: the world's largest
vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline.
And that is absolutely fine according to the British group's
chief medical officer for vaccines Thomas Breuer, who says the
company prefers the slow and steady approach of focusing on an
established technology that has the best chance of reaching the
widest possible demographic.
Moderna, the University of Oxford in collaboration
with AstraZeneca, and an alliance of BioNTech
and Pfizer grabbed headlines by moving to human trials
from as early as March.
GSK, which is in seven collaborations with institutions or
firms globally, only entered the clinical trial stage with one
project on Friday.
"We want to be best in class, and if others are a little
faster I will congratulate them because they can take care of
maybe the healthcare workers in selected countries, but the
world needs billions of doses and we will contribute to this
effort," Breuer told Reuters.
GSK aims to contribute a so-called adjuvant, an efficacy
booster that is combined with more traditional vaccines, while
the most advanced rival projects use novel genetic technologies
and have been accelerated through pre-clinical testing in labs
and on animals.
Breuer said vaccines developed later, and adjuvant
technology, may have longer or better efficacy, especially in
the elderly. As an example he pointed to GSK's best-seller
Shingrix, a shingles vaccine with an adjuvant for older people
that has swiftly replaced an established rival product.
The company laid out plans in May to produce 1 billion doses
of the efficacy boosters for COVID-19 shots next year, compared
to the 700 million or so vaccine doses against a range of
diseases it usually produces in a year.
Breuer said developing a wide range of partnerships was
GSK's answer to minimising the risk of failure and allowed it to
focus resources on its most promising technology against
COVID-19, even though it has previously worked on genetic
vaccines.
"The best thing GSK can offer is making the adjuvant
available to more than one company. We wanted to expose our
technology to have several shots on goal," he said.
Group CEO Emma Walmsley said in April that an immunisation
that works for and is available for most people was unlikely to
emerge before the second half of next year.
"Operation Warp Speed", a U.S. push to develop an
immunisation shot, by contrast, wants to have a vaccine
available by January 2021.
GSK is one of more than 100 global players working on
vaccines against COVID-19, which has killed about 350,000
people.
It has contributed its adjuvant to alliances involving
Chinese biotech firms Clover Biopharmaceuticals, Xiamen Innovax
and Chongqing Zhifei, as well as the University of
Queensland in Australia and Sanofi. Two more
collaborations are underway but have not been disclosed yet,
Breuer added.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
