Two of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers are joining forces to develop a new vaccine to prevent COVID-19.
Usually, the pharmaceutical behemoths GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi are competitors, but in a conference call with reporters, GSK CEO Emma Walmsley said the coronavirus pandemic represented “an unprecedented global health threat,” and, therefore, required new ways of doing business.
“We’re joining up with Sanofi in an unprecedented collaboration,” Walmsley said. “It brings together two of the world’s biggest vaccine companies with proven pandemic technologies and significant scale, all with the aim of developing an adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine.”
An adjuvanted vaccine is one that includes a compound known as an adjuvant that enhances someone’s immune response to a vaccine. In the partnership, GSK will be providing the adjuvant and Sanofi will provide the specific protein component of the coronavirus that will generate the appropriate antibody response.
GSK is hoping the partnership will reduce the development time of a vaccine considerably. Under normal circumstances, it can take a decade to bring a new vaccine to market…
To read the entire article from NPR, click https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834160187/coronavirus-vaccine-two-pharmaceutical-giants-collaborating-to-develop-one?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=nprblogscoronavirusliveupdates