Xi seeks victory over Trump in race for a Covid-19 vaccine | coronavirus outbreak News,The Indian E
- 4 years ago
Xi Jinping seeks victory over Trump in race for a Covid-19 vaccine
In total, five vaccines developed by Chinese companies are being tested on humans, the most in any country.
President Xi Jinping’s government is throwing the might of the Chinese state behind the country’s vaccine developers as the world races to make a shot against the coronavirus.
The sheer scale and speed of China’s effort ratchets up pressure on the US, where President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a program called Operation Warp Speed to accelerate vaccine research and development.
Xi has promised to share any successful vaccine globally, and the Chinese president would wield immense geopolitical clout if his country produces one of the world’s first working shots.
Government and private equity money has gone into companies like Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd., which in May began the second stage of testing for its vaccine.
The Chinese efforts were on show late Friday, when an early-stage study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, showed that an experimental vaccine from China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. was safe and generated an immune response.
China is also pursuing vaccine candidates using more traditional technologies that are more amenable to mass production.
He has vowed that the country’s vaccines, once approved for use, will become a global public good and accessible to other developing countries.
In doing so, he’s presented a contrast with Trump, who has threatened to cut off funding to the World Health Organization in a move that could disrupt vaccination and other public health initiatives in poor countries.
While China has boosted its scientific prowess in recent years, it has yet to produce a novel blockbuster drug or vaccine.
Globally, data from a slew of companies show how much work remains to be done to produce a working vaccine before companies anywhere in the world can declare victory.
CanSino makes its vaccine using a genetically modified cold-causing virus to carry the genetic material of the novel coronavirus, similar to the approach employed by Oxford.
The research on the CanSino vaccine was conducted in Wuhan and the company has teamed up with Chen Wei, a prominent military researcher.
CanSino previously worked with Chen on an Ebola vaccine that was approved for emergency use in 2017.
Several other Chinese companies, including Sinovac and China National Biotec Group Co., have candidates in human trials that employ a killed version of the novel coronavirus that can still an trigger immune response.
Sinovac’s research and development subsidiary has received $15 million from private equity firms Advantech Capital and Vivo Capital to fund the development of the inactivated vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac.
The company has also been assigned a large factory to produce its coronavirus vaccine.
While inactivated vaccines may be slower to develop initially, their familiar path to mass production might allow them to overtake shots made by newer, cutting-edge approaches.
That could be particularly helpful to Xi’s goal of distributing China’s vaccine worldwide.
In total, five vaccines developed by Chinese companies are being tested on humans, the most in any country.
President Xi Jinping’s government is throwing the might of the Chinese state behind the country’s vaccine developers as the world races to make a shot against the coronavirus.
The sheer scale and speed of China’s effort ratchets up pressure on the US, where President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a program called Operation Warp Speed to accelerate vaccine research and development.
Xi has promised to share any successful vaccine globally, and the Chinese president would wield immense geopolitical clout if his country produces one of the world’s first working shots.
Government and private equity money has gone into companies like Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd., which in May began the second stage of testing for its vaccine.
The Chinese efforts were on show late Friday, when an early-stage study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, showed that an experimental vaccine from China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. was safe and generated an immune response.
China is also pursuing vaccine candidates using more traditional technologies that are more amenable to mass production.
He has vowed that the country’s vaccines, once approved for use, will become a global public good and accessible to other developing countries.
In doing so, he’s presented a contrast with Trump, who has threatened to cut off funding to the World Health Organization in a move that could disrupt vaccination and other public health initiatives in poor countries.
While China has boosted its scientific prowess in recent years, it has yet to produce a novel blockbuster drug or vaccine.
Globally, data from a slew of companies show how much work remains to be done to produce a working vaccine before companies anywhere in the world can declare victory.
CanSino makes its vaccine using a genetically modified cold-causing virus to carry the genetic material of the novel coronavirus, similar to the approach employed by Oxford.
The research on the CanSino vaccine was conducted in Wuhan and the company has teamed up with Chen Wei, a prominent military researcher.
CanSino previously worked with Chen on an Ebola vaccine that was approved for emergency use in 2017.
Several other Chinese companies, including Sinovac and China National Biotec Group Co., have candidates in human trials that employ a killed version of the novel coronavirus that can still an trigger immune response.
Sinovac’s research and development subsidiary has received $15 million from private equity firms Advantech Capital and Vivo Capital to fund the development of the inactivated vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac.
The company has also been assigned a large factory to produce its coronavirus vaccine.
While inactivated vaccines may be slower to develop initially, their familiar path to mass production might allow them to overtake shots made by newer, cutting-edge approaches.
That could be particularly helpful to Xi’s goal of distributing China’s vaccine worldwide.