Supporting Science through COVID-19, 1st December 2020!

This week, we have seen some hugely positive steps forward with regards to a COVID-19 vaccine, with two U.S companies coming forward to state that their analysis data has been over 90% successful.

Here at CleanAir by Baker, we continue to #SupportScience across the globe, lets take a look at some further key findings from this month…

Pfizer & BioNTech have concluded their Phase 3 study of their COVID-19 candidate. The primary efficacy analysis of the vaccine candidate, BNT162b2 has shown to be 95% effective against COVID-19. Beginning 28 days after the first dose; 170 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were evaluated.

The data has demonstrated that the vaccine was well tolerated across all populations with over 43,000 participants enrolled. As a result, the companies expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses by the end of this year.

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A recent new study has found that there is a potential for Nitric Oxide to be used as a treatment for COVID-19. Currently, the only approved antiviral treatment is Remdesivir, however new findings now suggest that Nitric Oxide, a cell signalling molecule produced naturally by the body could be the answer. The molecule is known to have anti-inflammatory effects and is a vasodilator meaning that it dilates blood vessels in order to increase blood flow.

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Rentschler BioPharma have agreed to serve as the CDMO partner for BioNTech. In order to contribute, Rentschler will now be responsible for key aspects of the cGMP drug substance manufacturing of BNT162b2, the mRNA-based vaccine. Rentschler now handle downstream processing to provide a purified drug substance, therefore meaning that any process or product impurities are removed from the intermediate pool, which has previously derived from mRNA synthesis.

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A new global trial has been designed to test the theory of whether the BCG vaccine could potentially help to protect against COVID-19. Led by MCRI in Melbourne, the BRACE trial started in Australia back in March. However, a further investment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now allowed a global expansion to The Netherlands, Spain & Brazil.

The new trial aims to recruit 10,000 healthcare workers across the world and could be used as an early intervention measure for COVID-19.

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A study has found that COVID-19 fighting antibodies actually linger for a lot longer than initially thought. Despite the body’s defence against the virus, a study completed at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York used blood samples from 30,000 patients to examine the antibodies left in their blood post infection.

More than 90% of the infected patients had moderate to high levels of antibodies in their blood, and further experiments showed that these antibodies prevented the virus from infecting other cells five months after on set symptoms.

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Last week, we saw Moderna also release the news that their vaccine was 94.5% effective against COVID-19, meaning that it is now the second vaccine in the U.S to receive incredibly high success rates.

Moderna’s trial saw 30,000 participants involved with half given a placebo, and the other half given the vaccine. Within the group given the vaccine, similar to the Pfizer & BioNTech results, only five of them developed COVID-19. With no serious side effects, Moderna plans to begin its first vaccinations towards the end of December.

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1. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccine, 2. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-nitric-oxide-shows-promise-as-antiviral-treatment,
3. https://www.genengnews.com/topics/bioprocessing/rentschler-contributes-to-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-manufacture/, 4. https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2020/10/12/UK-joins-global-trial-to-test-BCG-vaccine-against-COVID-19,
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w, 6. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/16/health/moderna-vaccine-results-coronavirus/index.html