Exclusive | Institut Pasteur experts: Why don't we make an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine

The birth of each emerging infectious disease prompts a group of scientists to make a long-term effort to find a vaccine. Even if such efforts do not mean that they will necessarily lead to realistic results, they are indispensable for laying a good scientific foundation.

In the fight against disease, the vaccine development team's bigger enemy than the virus is time. With the advancement of technology, after the outbreak of the epidemic, many global teams at home and abroad, including Moderna and Shanghais Microbiology, have used the mRNA (Messenger Ribonucleic Acid) platform to rapidly develop vaccines, and have entered the early testing stage.

Compared with the Chinese and American research teams, the Vaccine Research Team in Europe has taken a more cautious and safe approach to the development of vaccines. The first financial reporter recently learned from the French Pasteur Institute that Pasteur has chosen a vaccine development platform with the measles (rougeole) vaccine as the carrier, and it is expected that the vaccine will begin to be put into clinical phase I at the end of August.

There are no clinical data validation for mRNA

The Paris-based Institut Pasteur in France was the originator of vaccine development, and its founder, Louis Pasteur, developed the first rabies vaccine in 1885. As the world's foremost biological, microbiological, infectious disease and vaccine research institute, the Pasteur Institute was the first to successfully isolate the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1983, and has also made revolutionary discoveries for diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio, influenza, yellow fever and plague. Since 1908, a total of 10 scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Professor Frederic Tangy, director of the Vaccine Innovation Laboratory at the Pasteur Institute, told the first financial reporter on February 24: "Although the method of mRNA to develop vaccines is very fast, the current method has not been clinically verified, and the industrial manufacturing process is far from mature, and it is impossible to produce the tens of millions of vaccine preparations needed." ”

The mRNA vaccine mimics the natural process of viral infection, induces human cells to produce the same proteins as the surface of the pathogen, and activates the body's immune response, which is like building a "pharmaceutical factory" in the human body.

However, there are also necessary steps to enter a clinical trial, which can range from a few months to several years depending on the trial cycle and the patient's condition.

Professor Tang Ji pointed out to the first financial reporter that the price of mRNA vaccine is likely to be ridiculously high. In contrast, it is more feasible to develop a vaccine for which the measles vaccine is a vector. He told the first financial reporter: "The measles vaccine has reached tens of millions of production every year, which is a vaccine that has been verified to be effective and has been used for more than 40 years in the history of human medicines." ”

According to Pasteur's method, the development of a novel coronavirus vaccine on a platform with the measles vaccine as the carrier requires three stages: the first stage is to add a virus fragment of the new coronavirus to the measles vaccine by cloning, and then continuously adjust it before entering the animal test, which lasts about 3 months; the second stage is that after the mouse test is passed, the vaccine directly enters the industrial manufacturing stage, and the industrial manufacturing can be shortened to 4 months in an emergency, and the preclinical toxicology test (animal test) is carried out at the same time; the third stage is the clinical research stage The clinical phase is divided into three stages, and the phase I clinical treatment takes about 2 months to evaluate the safety of the vaccine on the human body.

Lagging vaccine development can still lay the foundation for science

This means that Pasteur's vaccine will not be clinically available until August at the earliest, when the outbreak is likely to be over. In this regard, Professor Tang Ji told the first financial reporter: "This is the problem faced by all coronavirus vaccines, unless the epidemic continues to continue. ”

A former Chinese researcher at the Shanghai Pasteur Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is participating in the development of the new coronavirus vaccine told the first financial reporter: "From the successful development of the vaccine to the approval of the listing, it will take one year at the earliest, and the declaration can be accelerated, but the approval of the listing is not necessarily." Clinical trials themselves will take time, and if the outbreak is over, Phase III clinical trials will not be able to do it, just like the SARS vaccine. ”

But the researcher also said that vaccine research is still necessary, to lay the foundation for science, and to make technical reserves for the arrival of the next epidemic.

According to Tang Ji, the SARS vaccine developed by the Pasteur Institute at that time is still stored in the freezer and has been confirmed to be effective in animal tests. If SARS makes a comeback, then vaccines can be used to control it more quickly.

The first financial reporter learned that the global team of the Pasteur Institute is working day and night to study the new coronavirus, and has shelved a number of projects to give priority to research projects related to the new coronavirus. The Institut Pasteur has also developed a treatment plan that saves costs and increases the speed of diagnosis.

Globally, the leading companies of therapeutic vaccines have taken mRNA vaccines as an important research and development direction, such as Moderna, CureVac, BioNTech, etc. Moderna set a record for 40 days to develop a cancer vaccine.

On February 24, the first batch of novel coronavirus vaccines developed by Moderna have been sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for safety clinical trials. The company's after-hours stock price surged 20%.

Barney Graham, deputy director of the NIH Vaccine Research Center, previously said Moderna's vaccine will enter human clinical trials as soon as April. He said: "This is a vaccine exploration for unknown new viruses, and it will also force the reform of the process system, so we expect to advance how fast." The NIH also said it was ready to scale up future vaccine production.

In China, the novel coronavirus vaccine, which was jointly designed and developed by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the School of Medicine of Tongji University in Shanghai and the Shanghai biotechnology company Si Microbial, also entered the animal testing stage on February 9, and the vaccine was also developed based on the mRNA platform.