Canada is slow, but steady
Despite Pfizer vaccine results, experts say other firms not shut out of market just yet
Just because you’re first out of the gate, doesn’t mean you’re the only one in the race.
When international pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced promising results from a major trial of its COVID-19 vaccine last week, it sparked stock market rallies around the world, lifted the company’s share price and prompted optimistic statements from politicians and health officials.
But that doesn’t mean Canadian companies — and hundreds of others working on a COVID-19 vaccine — will be shut out of the market, pharmaceutical executives, industry watchers and medical experts say.
The biggest reason? The sheer scale of how many people will need and want vaccinations, says Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital.
“Pfizer has said they intend to manufacture more than a billion doses. That’s hugely ambitious. But that still leaves another seven billion of us. We need several COVID vaccines,” Bogoch said. “I believe that, ultimately, there will be four or five vaccines which dominate the market.”
While Pfizer’s vaccine is in a Phase 3 trial — the largest and final phase before a product is approved for release by health authorities — the most advanced Canadian attempt so far is an effort from Quebec-based Medicago.
That means, Bogoch said, that none of the 10 Canadian COVID-19 vaccine efforts currently listed with the World Health Organization are likely to be ready by 2021.
“Can we develop a COVID vaccine here in Canada? Absolutely. But will it be a meaningful part of the first wave of COVID vaccines? That’s very doubtful. The timelines just aren’t promising,” Bogoch said.
The international effort to develop effective COVID-19 vaccines is going at unprecedented speed, and Canadian companies are a relatively small part of the effort, Bogoch added.
“There are already 50 vaccines in human trials. And another 150 or so in the pretrial stage. The vast majority of them will never make it to market,” Bogoch said.
Canadian pharmacy executives, at
least publicly, say they weren’t worried by Pfizer’s announcement of a 90 per cent success rate in Phase 3 of a vaccine it had developed with Germany’s BioNTech.
Along with the sheer number of people who will need to get immunized, there’s another reason Pfizer’s vaccine — if approved for sale — won’t be alone, says Alexander Graves, CEO of B.C. based Symvivo Corporation, which is working on an oral COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer’s vaccine, Graves pointed out, comes in two doses, and needs to be stored cryogenically at minus-80 degrees C right up until it’s administered to a patient.
“It’s like serving two scoops of ice cream to everyone around the world a month apart,” said Graves, whose vaccine is still at the preclinical stage. “Until there’s a room-temperature, shelf-stable vaccine available, it will be much more of a logistical challenge.”
Jennifer Graves, CEO of B.C.based ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd., is optimistic her company’s effort at a vaccine will ultimately be successful because it’s only using part of a
“spike” protein antibodies bind to, as opposed to the whole thing. That makes it more useful if the virus causing COVID-19 mutates, meaning new versions of the vaccine are needed annually.
“We didn’t want to go after the low-hanging fruit,” Graves said.
Another factor in bringing a Canadian vaccine to market is the cost of development. According to John Lewis, a University of Alberta professor and CEO of Alberta-based Entos Pharmaceuticals, it can cost up to $400 million to bring a vaccine to market. It’s the sheer scale of a Phase 3 human trial that makes it particularly pricey.
“The Phase 3 trial alone could be $250 million. You have to find 30,000 subjects, pay them, administer the vaccine, monitor them. It’s a massive, costly effort,” said Lewis, whose firm has nonetheless managed to secure the roughly $30 million needed for a Phase 2 trial and is “on the cusp” of starting a Phase 1 trial.
“We’ve got investment lined up through Phase 2. It will be hard to get investment for Phase 3 until people see our Phase 1 results,” Lewis said. While the Canadian government has contributed $4.2 million to Entos’s effort, the rest has come from other sources, Lewis said.
“I was looking for funding anywhere I could get it,” said Lewis, whose company is doing its work out of a lab at the University of Alberta.
Still, Lewis was happy to see Pfizer’s announcement.
“As a scientist, I was delighted and fascinated. As someone with two elderly parents, I was very happy. As a businessman, I was also happy, because I think it validates a lot of the other work which is being done,” Lewis said.