The two flagship partners of 2020 are doing it again. The American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German laboratory BioNTech, the origin of the best-selling Covid vaccine in the world, now want to develop a combined vaccine targeting influenza and Covid. This Thursday, they announced the launch of a first trial phase of a candidate vaccine based on messenger RNA, the technology of the first vaccine against Covid.
A combination vaccine from mRNA technology “could simplify vaccination practices against these two respiratory pathogens, potentially leading to better vaccination coverage for both diseases,” said Annaliesa Anderson, chief scientific officer at Pfizer, in a statement. communicated.
Competitors have already advanced their pawns
Pfizer and BioNTech join other laboratories which are also trying to develop a combined vaccine: the American Moderna has started phase 1 of a vaccine against influenza and Covid, he confirmed on Thursday on the sidelines of the announcement of its quarterly results. In mid-October, the American biotechnology laboratory Novavax announced the “positive results of the phase 1 and 2 clinical trial” of a vaccine candidate of this type.
The Mainz firm will be in charge of testing the safety, immune response and optimal dose level of a candidate combination vaccine, by recruiting 180 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 64 in the United States, according to a press release. The follow-up period for each participant will be six months. The testing phase will serve to uncover “the potential of mRNA vaccines targeting more than one pathogen,” Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, said in the statement.