Vaccine for coronavirus could take three years to reach public

Long process to develop, approve, scientists say

A Canadian scientist working on a vaccine to treat the coronavirus outbreak says it could take up to three years before it reaches the people who need it. And, if the coronavirus outbreak is anything like that of SARS, there may not even be a need for the vaccine by then.

Scientists at the International Vaccine Centre (Vido-intervac) at the University of Saskatchewan began work on developing the vaccine when the novel coronavirus was first announced.

However, Darryl Falzarano, a research scientist at the centre, said that it could take up to a year before the vaccine is deemed ready for clinical trials, and a couple more before it’s distributed to the regions in need.

“There’s no pre-existing information,” the virologist said. “It’s related to SARS and Sars-like viruses that have been found in bats, but, on its own, it’s something unique and new.”

As of Friday, the virus has killed 249 people and has infected more than 11,700 people in mainland China. Canada has confirmed four cases of the coronavirus.

Scientists in China sequenced the genome of the novel coronavirus and released the data publicly on Jan. 10, allowing teams around the world to kickstart efforts into researching a vaccine.

Australian scientists announced on Jan. 28 that they were able to recreate the virus and were willing to share samples with other teams — a key element to testing vaccines.

“You don’t need the virus to make a vaccine for that virus. But to actually test if the vaccine works at some point, you need the virus to challenge and show protection,” Falzarano said.

A team is in the preliminary stages of developing a vaccine. “We have a plan, we have reagents that are being made” to build the vaccine, he said.

Once a prototype is developed, the team will test its efficacy in an animal model “to see whether or not it’s immunogenic.”

Rounds of animal testing could take another three months, he said, which would then be followed by “making the vaccine so it’s acceptable for clinical use.”

It’s difficult to predict exactly when the vaccine could be ready for clinical trials, Falzarano said, but “the general consensus” is that it could take up to a year. And it could be another year before the vaccine can be distributed.

“That sounds like a long time,” but in reality, the process has been “accelerated,” Falzarano said. “Most vaccines are taking almost 10 years from discovery to clinical trials to approval.”

Research into SARS and other strains of coronaviruses has helped scientists.

The coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak and the 2019-ncov “are probably between 75 per cent and 80 per cent similar at a genetic level … and are part of the same subgroup of coronaviruses,” said Dr. Samira Mubareka, an infectious disease consultant at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

They are somewhat similar in the sense that both viruses are “transmitted by the respiratory route” and attach to the same host cell receptors, she said. “However, that’s not enough to say that they are the same virus.”