Pfizer, BioNTech race to test vaccines

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Pfizer and BioNTech announced this week they've begun testing their experimental coronavirus vaccines on humans in the U.S. and Germany. They hope to get emergency authorization from U.S. regulators in the fall, shrinking a development process that often takes as much as a decade to just over 9 months.

Speaking to Reuters, Pfizer's chief scientific officer Mikael Dolsten said Pfizer was able to get a head start because it had already been working with its German partner.

"We were fortunate to have invested in a new technology platform called mRNA vaccine and worked for two years with a partner in Germany, BioNTech partner, to deal with flu and made a lot of progress with the platform. And it turned out that we could bring that experience and make a leap into application for SARS-CoV-2. And now, so quickly, something I haven't even dreamt about, not even in imagination, that just a few months after starting of those activities, we got all the things right into a vaccine that is ready for trials and now ongoing in United States and Germany."

The mRNA technology Dolsten was referring to carries information from DNA to cells where proteins are made. That technology platform enables the vaccine to be developed and made more quickly than traditional vaccines.

Pfizer plans to expand its part of the trial beyond volunteers at NYU and the University of Maryland medical schools to sites across the U.S. in early July. Ultimately, it may test more than 8,000 participants. Dolsten told Reuters that safety is paramount.

"We have a very parallel way of working, and not waiting always for all results, but assuming success, but always securing safety. And (we) do many steps in parallel, that could bring us the opportunity, if everything goes as planned, that in October we could have data suggesting a safe and with high probability to be effective vaccine and have started to manufacture to have at least a few million doses available, and then ramp up that to end of the year to have tens of million doses and go into 2021, possibly hundred millions of doses, and, over time things go well, billion."

There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for the new coronavirus, though some drugs are being used on patients under an emergency use authorization.