Vaccine Development : Covid-19

Aashish Dhakal

Vaccine development is a lengthy, expensive process. Attrition is high, and it typically takes multiple candidates and many years to produce a licensed vaccine. Because of the cost and high failure rates, developers typically follow a linear sequence of steps, with multiple pauses for data analysis or manufacturing-process checks. Developing a vaccine quickly requires a new pandemic paradigm, with a fast start and many steps executed in parallel before confirming a successful outcome of another step, hence resulting in elevated financial risk. For example, for platforms with experience in humans, phase 1 clinical trials may be able to proceed in parallel with testing in animal models.