Research against coronavirus on all frontsThe coronavirus pandemic hitting the world demands a war effort. On the front lines, the biotech laboratories are working tirelessly to discover new weapons to treat affected patients, to test them, but also to permanently curb the epidemic. European laboratories, which are among the best in the world, are hyperactive. What to nurture serious hopes in these times of anxiety. Overview of weapons in development. The number of people affected by COVID-19 coronaviral disease continues to climb, affecting almost every country in the world. Both states and international health organizations expect tens of millions of people to become infected. A small minority of them will develop serious forms that can lead to death. Their number is starting to saturate medic
al services. It is therefore urgent to find the parade and to implement the major means. There should be no shortage of money, with governments as well as international institutions promising to spend countless times to quickly curb the disease. Already, the European Commission is funding projects to develop vaccines, treatments and diagnostics with grants from
Horizon 2020 and the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), which announced last week the public grants of up to 45 million euros to finance studies on this disease. IMI expects pharmaceutical companies to bring in more money for a total investment of 90 million euros.
Charities are not left behind in this battle. The British charity The Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Mastercard today launched a € 110 million
initiative to boost public-private collaboration and accelerate the time to market for Covid-19 treatments.
The biotechnology industry in Europe is a key element in the fight against Covid-19, in terms of vaccine development, therapeutic drugs, diagnostics and research. The
Labiotech organization
, which assiduously follows the news of European biotechnologies, has established an excellent work of inventory of the initiatives of the laboratories on the coronavirus. UP 'takes up this overview of the biggest Covid-19 projects underway in the field of European biotechnologies.
The vaccine race All actors in the fight for the development of Covid-19 vaccines are at the preclinical stage. It's hard to say who wins the vaccine race, but the research backed by big pharmaceutical companies is the one that gets the most attention.
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For example,
Sanofi and
Janssen are each collaborating with the American Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop vaccines at the preclinical stage.
An advanced program is a collaboration between the Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), funded by public and private funds, and the German biotechnology company
CureVac to develop an mRNA vaccine for Covid-19. Like the American giant of mRNA
Moderna , CureVac aims to prove that mRNA vaccines will be faster to develop and manufacture than traditional biological vaccines, and aims to have a candidate in phase 1 by the start of the summer.
In addition to CureVac, the German company
BioNTech - which has a number of developing mRNA vaccines for cancer and flu - is the subject of a potential
partnership with
Pfizer to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.
Many other smaller projects are also underway. Yesterday, 2.7 million euros from the Horizon 2020 grant were allocated to a Danish public-private
collaboration for the development of a vaccine against Covid-19, with the biotechnology companies
ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies and
AdaptVac . The consortium aims to start a phase 1 / 2a clinical trial for a vaccine within 12 months.
Oncology biotechnology company
Vaxil Bio is also on board, reporting proteins that could also be used as a
vaccine for Covid-19. There are also programs run by the Italian company
Takis Biotech, in collaboration with the American manufacturer
Applied DNA Sciences , scientists from the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Italian company
Advent , and a research group from the Imperial College of London, which aims to launch clinical trials in early summer if it obtains funding. Table of laboratories working on a coronavirus vaccine
Several European companies are developing methods to help other companies develop a Covid-19 vaccine. An example is the spin-off of the Danish university
Immunitrack . In early March, the company
released a report on some of the most promising viral structures in the coronavirus strain that could lead to a vaccine.
The British company
Native Antigen Company has also entered the vaccine field by launching coronavirus antigens for research purposes, which could accelerate efforts in vaccine development and diagnostic testing.
The Swiss company
Roquette has a more indirect approach, by developing molecules called cyclodextrins which could make vaccines more stable against Covid-19, and also make antiviral drugs easier to produce.
The first vaccines could go into phase 1 by summer, but regulators will likely require one to two years of human testing to make sure the vaccine is safe and effective. Even after obtaining approval, companies have to start manufacturing and distributing the vaccine on a commercial scale, which takes time. In total, the world could see an approved Covid-19 vaccine available by mid-2021.
Antiviral drugs A number of companies are planning to develop new antiviral drugs or to adapt current experimental drugs to fight the new virus. Antiviral drugs are tricky to develop because, unlike bacteria, viruses hide in our own cells. This means that drugs used to stop viruses are more likely to affect our own cells and cause side effects, such as the antiviral medicine
Tamiflu , which can cause nausea and even hallucinations in some patients.
The Parisian company
Iktos , which specializes in the discovery of drugs against avian flu, recently launched a
collaboration with the American synthetic chemistry company
SRI International . The objective of this collaboration is to develop new antiviral drugs to treat Covid-19, among other types of virus.
Austrian biotech company
Apeiron launched a pilot phase 2
clinical trial of a “drug candidate” for the treatment of Covid-19 in late February. The protein drug has already completed phase 1 and 2 trials for the treatment of acute lung damage, and is designed to work by mimicking a protein to which the coronavirus binds when it invades lung tissue.
Many efforts are also being made to redirect approved antiviral drugs to treat Covid-19. This has the advantage that the safety of the drug is already known and that it can be brought to market more quickly.
Scientists based in institutions in Goettingen and Berlin, Germany, are
studying the potential of
camostat mesilate - a drug approved in Japan for the treatment of inflammation of the pancreas - to protect against the coronavirus by blocking a protein vital to the function of the virus.
Another effort to reorient antiviral drugs took place at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The authors of a study
published in the
International Journal of Infectious Diseases have identified 31 approved antiviral drugs that have the potential to treat or prevent Covid-19, such as lopinavir and ritonavir.
While research on antivirals in Europe is in its infancy, efforts are already underway to rapidly redirect approved antivirals to China, with phase 3 trials underway for treatments such as a combination of
lopinavir-ritonavir and
remdesivir .
Diagnostic tests Although the focus is on vaccines and drugs, the importance of diagnostics for Covid-19 cannot be overlooked. There is strong global demand to quickly identify cases of COVID-19. Their accuracy is essential for knowing and combating the disease and its potential for contagiousness, morbidity or lethality. The United States discovered this at their expense when official disease tests were found to contain
defective reagents , questioning the accuracy of the figures for disease cases in the United States.
In mid-February, the French diagnostic company
Novacyt launched what it believes to be the first approved test to clinically detect the virus responsible for Covid-19. This launch follows that of the same test intended only for research, at the end of January. The company is now trying to deploy the test in other territories.
Last week, British biotech company
Mologic received a € 1.1 million grant from the British government and the Wellcome Trust to finance the development of a portable diagnostic device that detects Covid-19 in ten minutes, without the need for a laboratory or electricity. The company is also working on manufacturing this device in Africa in order to manage possible epidemics on this continent.
Other companies developing tests for Covid include
Qiagen , which distributed diagnostic tests for clinical evaluation as early as the end of February. The Finnish company
Mobidiag , which follows closely, began in early February to develop a thirty-minute clinical test for the Covid-19 in collaboration with the Chinese company
Autobio Diagnostics .
In addition to diagnostics, European companies are also busy developing tests that help researchers study the coronavirus.
Next-generation Austrian sequencing company
Ares Genetics joined the fight in late January when it signed an agreement with Chinese company
BGI Group to track the virus and contribute to efforts to control its spread in Europe.
The German company
Genekam also launched one of the first tests for the coronavirus behind Covid-19 in early February, which was intended only for research.
Even with the most accurate and fastest diagnostic tests, containment measures are also important. According to a study
published yesterday in
The Lancet , Chinese quarantine and social distancing policies can help contain the epidemic.
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