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LONDON, April 15 (Reuters) - The world will need more than
one COVID-19 vaccine so drug companies must partner in the race
to develop the weapons to fight the novel coronavirus,
GlaxoSmithKline Chief Executive Officer Emma Walmsley said on
Wednesday.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi SA said on
Tuesday they would develop a vaccine to fight the fast-spreading
coronavirus.
The drugmakers said they expect to start clinical trials for
the vaccine in the second half of this year. If successful, the
vaccine would be available in the second half of 2021.
Walmsley said GSK's partnership with Sanofi brings scale to
the attempt to get a covid-19 vaccine but that there was still
an enormous amount of work to do.
"The world's going to definitely need more than one vaccine
when you think about demand in this hugely challenged global
health crisis," she told BBC Radio.
The adjuvanted vaccine will be developed by combining
Sanofi's S-protein COVID-19 antigen and GSK's pandemic adjuvant
technology.
"It normally takes a decade, sometimes even more, to develop
a vaccine but obviously we are in an unprecedented situation,
the need is incredibly urgent. We are partnering with regulators
to try and go as fast as we safely can."
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Kylie MacLellan and James
Davey; editing by Kate Holton)