Pfizer vaccine could change future of health treatments
As Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla put it in mid-January to investors, in its noexpenses-spared development last year of a vaccine for COVID-19, the pharmaceutical giant collected know-how it would have taken years to accumulate otherwise.
“We developed [it] in months,” Bourla said. “It’s time to use it for the better of humanity.”
Working with Germany’s BioNTech, Pfizer scientists perfected a vaccine that instructs cells to create a harmless version of the “spike” protein that lodges in lungs, which the body’s immune system then learns to break down and so attack the real virus if one becomes infected.
Before heading to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in December for lightning approval, the vaccine’s final stop was in Groton. The research lab is Pfizer’s largest of seven major research and development centers globally, at 2.8 million square feet and employing 5,000 people in scientific and support roles.
With Pfizer’s attention now on manufacturing and distribution of as many as two billion doses this year, Groton staff will continue assessing the vaccine’s performance — but also girding up for a possible raft of new treatments in the coming years as Pfizer applies what it has learned to other vaccines and therapies in its pipeline.
Will the global fight against COVID-19 result in faster and more effective development? The World Health Organization estimates that more than two million lives are saved each year thanks to vaccines, with WHO kicking off this year an Immunization Agenda 2030 program that covers everything from universal coverage to emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic and research to find new vaccines.
Speaking in mid-January as part of an online forum hosted by JPMorgan Chase, Bourla suggested Pfizer is making leaps already on an influenza vaccine that could be produced in weeks rather than months, using the messenger RNA platform that enabled the COVID-19 vaccine.
Pfizer labs in La Jolla, Calif. and Boulder, Colo. are now collaborating on new drugs to stop the proliferation of cancer cells, including for breast cancer patients at risk of the disease spreading to other parts of the body. Bourla said that Pfizer has “significant resources deployed” as well to develop treatments for prostate cancer.
And other vaccines are in the works to address pneumococcal infections and respiratory syncytial virus that can be deadly for infants and to ward off Lyme disease.
“The world will see many more breakthroughs that would be defined as first- and best-in-class, that would change patients’ lives like COVID just did,” Bourla said this month. “It’s a must — I don’t [see] how, after all this knowhow that we have developed together with our partner BioNTech in ... mRNA technology, that we will not utilize it to be able to provide medical solutions for other devastating diseases.”
Pfizer did not make any manager available for comment on the implications of the company’s bioscience and operational breakthroughs last year for its Groton plant, with a spokesperson citing the volume of media requests for interviews.
The Connecticut Business & Industry Association invited Angela Hwang to give the keynote address at CBIA’s annual economic summit slated for Friday, Jan. 22, with Hwang group president in charge of Pfizer’s commercial operations.
Speaking in December as part of a panel hosted by GZERO Media, Hwang described the development of a COVID-19 vaccine in nine months as “what once we thought was impossible.”
For Hwang, first things first — saving as many people as possible this year from the ravages of COVID-19.
“There’s a whole lot more to learn about … just the direction that this particular virus is going, and what we can actually learn with the vaccination program,” Hwang said in December. “There will be other studies that will be initiated to help us really get under the hood of how to really solve for this pandemic and other variations thereof. So I think there’s a lot more to come. Today, … what we know is that we have something that works.”