WHO։ AstraZeneca, Moderna ahead in Covid-19 vaccine race

PanARMENIAN.Net - AstraZeneca’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine is probably the world’s leading candidate and most advanced in terms of development, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) chief scientist has said, according to WIC News.

The British drugmaker has already begun large-scale, mid-stage human trials of the vaccine, which was developed by researchers at the University of Oxford. This week, AstraZeneca signed its tenth supply and manufacturing deal.

“Certainly in terms of how advanced they are, the stage at which they are, they are I think probably the leading candidate,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a news conference.

“So it’s possible they will have results quite early.”

Swaminathan said Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate was “not far behind” AstraZeneca’s, among more than 200 candidates, 15 of which have entered clinical trials.

Moderna Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech company co-founded by Armenian entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan.

“We do know that Moderna’s vaccine is also going to go into phase three clinical trials, probably from the middle of July, and so that vaccine candidate is not far behind,” she said.“But I think AstraZeneca certainly has a more global scope at the moment in terms of where they are doing and planning their vaccine trials.”