On May 11, local time, Francis Collins, president of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Anthony Fudge, director of the National Institutes of Health ’s Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and others in Science Published a signed article discussing the potential of different new crown candidate vaccines and key factors to be considered in the development process. The article also emphasizes that any single new crown vaccine or vaccine platform cannot meet global needs and requires a coordinated and strategic approach to vaccine development.

The author points out that the development of the new crown vaccine requires unprecedented cooperation between governments, academic institutions, industry and non-profit organizations. NIH will lead the public and private sectors to promote such cooperation in vaccine trial design and data sharing.

The first author of this article is Professor Lawrence Corey of the Department of Vaccine and Infectious Diseases of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the United States, and the corresponding author is the director of NIAID Anthony Fodge. NIH Dean Francis Collins and NIAID Vaccine Research Center Director John Muskola are co-authors of the article.


Francis Collins, president of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), wrote in Science.

The article mentioned that the current vaccine development work is progressing rapidly, and several major vaccine platforms are moving towards clinical evaluation. The main research and development directions include recombinant protein vaccines, viral vector vaccines and nucleic acid vaccines. Because each vaccine platform has its advantages and limitations, a multi-pronged strategic approach is required.

Lawrence Corey and others introduced that Moderna, BioNTech / Pfizer, CuraVac and Inovio are developing nucleic acid vaccines such as DNA or mRNA. Such vaccines can be quickly generated on the basis of viral sequences, and thus can enter the clinical stage quickly. However, although the scientific community has accumulated more experience in the early clinical stage of nucleic acid vaccines, no nucleic acid vaccine has yet obtained a large-scale license.

For the nucleic acid vaccine R & D route, the author concludes, “The way forward is full of optimism, but there are still some uncertainties. The immunogenicity and safety of these products need to be quickly evaluated And at the same time solve the problem of lack of commercial experience. “

As far as recombinant protein vaccines are concerned, although the time from R & D to production is longer than nucleic acid vaccines, people have changed from hepatitis B vaccines , Herpes zoster vaccine and influenza vaccine have accumulated rich business experience. However, the authors point out that some adjuvants needed for protein vaccines may be in short supply.

In order to promote the research and development cooperation of the new crown vaccine, the article introduces a cooperative project to coordinate clinical trials of multiple vaccines, namely ACTIV (Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines) public and private partners relationship. The content of this project includes the use of a common clinical trial design, the same clinical endpoints, standardized immunoassays, and common data security requirements and regulatory committees to enable the transparent evaluation of the relative effectiveness of each vaccine.


ACTIV model for the development of new crown vaccines

These methods are mainly targeted in the United States The new crown vaccine trial was conducted, but the author pointed out that “the new crown pneumonia prevention network established under the ACTIV plan has a global perspective and must be coordinated with the World Health Organization, the Epidemic Prevention Innovation Alliance and other global charitable partners.”

The test of the new crown vaccine is not limited to the research and development level. The manufacture of hundreds of millions or even billions of vaccines requires the use of worldwide vaccine manufacturing capacity. The authors call for funding the necessary biomanufacturing plants and pay attention to the various obstacles that may be encountered in the deployment of vaccines, including costs, distribution systems and cold chain requirements. “All these issues require global cooperation between health care and economic organizations.”