Following today’s news that Clover and GSK have announced a research collaboration to evaluate a coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, and also that the US government wants extra funds for vaccine development and other health care initiatives related to the virus;
Michael Breen, Director, Infectious Diseases, Pharma at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on these breaking developments:
“The news regarding GSK is absolutely game changing. GSK is the world leader in vaccines, and partnering with them significantly boosts our hopes of both the timely development of a vaccine, and the capability to produce it in large enough quantities necessary to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
“However, we can’t have too many rods in the fire here, for example in the past, virus’ such as SARS and MERS each saw interest from roughly 20 developers, while direct collaboration with GSK will be limited to a very small number of companies, GSK will allow other developers to use its proprietary adjuvant used in its Shingrix vaccine for COVID-19 vaccine development, allowing the company to indirectly contribute to the development process.
The additional news of the US involvement is critical as the US is the single largest source of pharmaceutical development in the world. The US governments commitment to stopping this outbreak, even though the country has seen comparatively fewer cases, clearly demonstrates that while there is potential for the outbreak to expand there, the global impact across all sectors, healthcare or otherwise, is something that the US Government believe must be addressed immediately.”
