How has a Covid vaccine been developed so quickly?
How has it been possible to develop vaccines against Covid-19 in less than a year?
A
key consideration is funding – public and private cash has been poured
into the race for a Covid vaccine, pushing aside the usual financial
concerns facing pharmaceutical companies. What’s more, demand and
urgency are high.
“The
fact that governments pre-bought the vaccines meant that people could
take greater risks with what they did at an earlier stage without having
to take one step at a time,” said Stephen Evans, professor of
pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine.
Traditionally, vaccines are
developed by weakening it or killing a virus, or by producing part of
the virus in the lab. However this is time consuming.
Instead,
both the Oxford University/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines
were developed using different “platform technologies” that involve
slotting genetic material from the virus into a tried and tested
delivery package. Once introduced into the human body this genetic
material is used by the protein-making machinery in our cells to churn
out the coronavirus “spike protein”, triggering an immune response.
This
approach was aided by the speed at which scientists in China identified
and shared the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus, and work that
was already under way on other coronaviruses.
How has the UK managed to approve vaccines before Europe and the US?
While
there has been much talk about how Brexit might have aided the speedy
approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the MHRA, experts have stressed
EU laws allow member states to approve medicines for emergency use
without authorisation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
However Evans said the Brexit transition period might mean the MHRA currently had some extra capacity.
“We
are in this slightly weird position where we haven’t had to do the work
that we will have to do from 1 January, and we haven’t got the work
we’d normally be doing for the EMA,” he said .
But
Ward said other factors were important. “In order for [a] product to be
approved [by the EMA], the [EU] member states have to agree the
conditions of its use,” she said, noting that it took more discussion
than if only one state was involved. Another possibility is that Europe
may wish to wait to until it is known that there is little variation
from batch to batch of vaccine.
