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The French Pasteur Institute said on Monday it was halting development of a Covid-19 vaccine with U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck after clinical trial results turned out to be disappointing.
The partners announced a merger last May to develop a vaccine based on an existing measles vaccine, which entered phase 1 clinical trials in August.
“In these early human trials, the prospective vaccine was well tolerated but produced lower immune responses than those seen in people who had recovered naturally and those seen in licensed vaccines,” said a statement from the Institute. Pastor.
The announcement is another blow to hopes for a French-led vaccine after the recent announcement that national pharmaceutical leader Sanofi is also struggling to market its vaccine candidate.
Sanofi announced in December that its vaccine would be ready by the end of 2021 at best, and the group is now being encouraged by the government to help produce rival vaccines already cleared for use in Europe.
These include products from the German-American association BioNTech / Pfizer and the American pharmaceutical group Moderna.
Britain has also cleared the use of a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which is being evaluated by European Union regulators.
The Institut Pasteur, named after pioneering scientist Louis Pasteur who developed a rabies vaccine in 1885, said it was working on two more Covid-19 vaccines that are not yet ready for clinical trials.
The decision to abandon the Covid vaccine on the basis of a measles vaccine “has no impact on the pursuit of research by the Institut Pasteur on two other candidate vaccines using different methodologies”, he explains.
(AFP)
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