PARIS - Pharma giants Sanofi and GSK have agreed to supply Britain with up to 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the firms announced Wednesday.
The agreement covers a vaccine candidate developed by France's Sanofi in partnership with the UK's GSK and is subject to a "final contract".
Amid a global race to find a vaccine to halt the pandemic, Sanofi announced "ongoing discussions with the European Commission, with France and Italy on the negotiation team, and other governments to ensure global access to a novel coronavirus vaccine."
Both companies voiced in a statement their commitment "to making their COVID-19 vaccine candidate affordable and available globally."
The vaccine candidate "has the potential to play a significant role in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic, both in the UK and around the world," said GSK Vaccines President Roger Connor.
Sanofi predicted regulatory approval for the vaccine "could be achieved by the first half of 2021."
UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma, quoted in the statement, hailed the progress but noted "the fact remains that there are no guarantees."
“In the meantime, it is important that we secure early access to a diverse range of promising vaccine candidates, like GSK and Sanofi, to increase our chances of finding one that works so we can protect the public and save lives."
Britain has already secured access to 90 million doses of potential coronavirus vaccines in deals with biotech firms BioNTech, Pfizer and Valneva.
The deals involve 30 million doses of a vaccine being developed by US pharma giant Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, and 60 million doses of another created by France's Valneva.
The government in London has also said it would purchase 100 million doses of a vaccine currently being trialed by Oxford University in partnership with AstraZeneca.
Britain has been one of the worst affected countries in the world since the outbreak began, with more than 45,750 deaths.
Agence France-Presse
PARIS - French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said Tuesday it would invest $425 million to expand its vaccine development venture with US start-up Translate Bio as they aim to find a COVID-19 vaccine by next year.
The companies have been working together since 2018, hoping to leverage Translate Bio's work on new messenger RNA (mRNA) drugs that cause cells to create a specific protein for treating a range of diseases.
Their work has taken on greater urgency with the coronavirus pandemic, as pharma groups race to be the first to offer a vaccine to halt an outbreak that has killed nearly 470,000 people worldwide since December.
In a statement, Sanofi said they have "multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates" in the works and hope to start a clinical trial with humans in the fourth quarter of this year.
"We believe that adding this mRNA platform to our vaccines development capabilities will help us advance prevention against current and future infectious diseases," said Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president at Sanofi Pasteur, the firm's vaccines unit.
Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson told journalists on Monday that his firm's most promising COVID-19 treatment is "the only vaccine in the race which is offering a proven platform which works at scale."
"We are a little bit slower but we are much more likely to have success," he said at a briefing ahead of Sanofi's investor day Tuesday.
Hudson drew the ire of French officials last month when he suggested that any COVID-19 vaccine would be offered first to the US government, which has invested millions in its development by the company.
Under pressure, he later indicated that it would be available to everyone at the same time and he announced a new 490 million euro vaccine production site in France last week while touring a facility with President Emmanuel Macron.
"We're making vaccines in Europe and we're making vaccines in the US, so we anticipate having vaccines simultaneously available in many markets," Hudson said Monday.
Agence France-Presse
