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With the injections of Pfizer, Moderna and Sputnik V being widely distributed since December, the American pharmaceutical giant Merck and its partner the Institut Pasteur in France have canceled their plans for vaccines against the coronavirus due to weak immune responses.
Merck, known as MSD outside of North America, said Monday it was halting development of two of its vaccine candidates.
The decision was made after the results of Phase 1 clinical trials revealed that the immune responses produced by the candidates were lower than those found in people cured of the coronavirus, as well as in competing vaccines.
“We are grateful to our collaborators who worked with us on these candidate vaccines and to the volunteers participating in the trials,” Said Dr Dean Y. Li, Director of Merck Research Laboratories.
The American company will now focus its efforts on two drug candidates it was developing, while continuing its research on the virus, which has already infected more than 99 million people and killed more than 2.1 million people worldwide.
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One of the canceled candidates was developed by Merck in collaboration with the Paris-based French Institut Pasteur, which also confirmed that their work on the project had been scrapped.
Vaccination based on a measles vaccine has been being tested since early August. It was never part of the French government’s vaccination program.
The Institut Pasteur will continue its two other vaccine projects – one intended for nasal distribution and the other based on DNA. However, both are in the preclinical stage.
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