Many challenges remain

Drugmakers see long road ahead in coronavirus vaccine race

Drugmakers racing to find a vaccine or effective treatment for the deadly new coronavirus in China cautioned that they have a long way to go.

That runs counter to reports of a supposed “breakthrough” that on Wednesday boosted financial markets and spurred optimism not necessarily backed by reality.

At least a dozen drugmakers are working on vaccines or antivirals and other treatments to help those infected with the fast-spreading contagion.

Investment costs for vaccines could run as high as

$800 million in a process that, even if accelerated, will likely take more than a year until approval, according to executives from companies involved in the effort.

“It will take at least 12 to 18 months, which means in the acute situation we are in now - at least in China - that will not create a benefit,” said Thomas Breuer, chief medical officer of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine unit. GSK is working with developers by providing a technology that could make their vaccines more potent.

The virus, which emerged in December in China, has killed nearly 500 people and shows no sign of abating, with thousands of new cases reported each day, mostly in central China’s Hubei province.

But its spread to some 27 countries and regions has caused global alarm.

To be sure, companies developing treatments for patients who are already sick may be able to get a drug approved faster than a vaccine that would be given to healthy people. Even so, logistical and regulatory challenges remain, according to two executives at Gilead Sciences Inc , which is working on an experimental antiviral treatment.

“There is a distinction there between a therapeutic and a vaccine. Having said that, I think it is true that this won’t be super fast and it will involve us investing at risk right now,” said Gilead Chief Medical Officer Merdad Parsey.

Clinical trials for treatments can be smaller and of shorter duration than for vaccines, Parsey acknowledged.

Challenges in making sure therapies are effective and then scaling up production still remain. Gilead has only a limited supply of its remdesivir, which will be tested against the coronavirus after previously failing in trials as a treatment for Ebola.

‘LOOKING FOR A MAGIC BULLET’

Dr. Thomas Frieden, who was director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the also deadly MERS outbreak, said the benefit of antiviral treatments for such emergencies in the past has been modest.

What worked with MERS and SARS, for example, was better infection control in health care facilities, he said of two other types of coronaviruses that also caused global alarm.

“It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but we’re often looking for a magic bullet and the bright shiny object. Sometimes we need to just have the basics,” Frieden said.

A Chinese TV report on Wednesday said that a research team at Zhejiang University had found an effective drug for the virus, while researchers in the UK told Sky News separately they had made a “significant breakthrough” in finding a vaccine.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports, but several traders cited them for sharp upticks in global stock markets.

AMANDA VOISARD/REUTERS National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director doctor Anthony Fauci speaks about the public health response to the outbreak of the coronavirus during a news conference at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, last month.