Pascal Soriot, CEO of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, has defended his company’s transparency amid criticism that it has not been forthcoming enough about safety concerns that led to a hiatus in testing its COVID-19 vaccine.
He said revealing more information about the specific problem that had caused the temporary interruption of testing around the world could inadvertently reveal the identity of the volunteer who developed a serious medical problem while participating in the study. It could also “clarify” the study, letting the doctors conducting it know whether they were giving the vaccine or a placebo to certain groups, possibly invalidating the results, he said.
“Medicine should not be practiced by the media, it should be practiced by experts,” Soriot said, speaking on a panel at a World Economic Forum virtual event on sustainable development.
The company has been criticized for not disclosing enough information about the exact nature of the safety issue, causing global testing of its candidate vaccine to be halted on September 6, or why an independent review board was later concluded.
The tests are known to have been stopped after a volunteer in the UK part of the tests developed severe neurological symptoms. But the company did not proactively disclose this information to the general public and only confirmed the security issue, as well as a previous temporary hiatus due to a similar security issue, after news organizations published the story.
On September 13, trials resumed in the UK, Brazil, South Africa and India after an independent review board and British regulators determined that there was no clear evidence that the volunteer’s symptoms were the result of the vaccine.
But the trials have yet to resume in the United States.
AstraZeneca had been at the forefront of the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine for approval in the US and Europe, but the long hiatus in US trials may mean another company gets approval first. of a vaccine. Both Pfizer and the American biotech company Moderna have vaccine candidates in late-stage trials in the US, and Pfizer says their inoculation may be ready for emergency approval by the end of October.
Soriot has previously said that the AstraZeneca vaccine candidate “stayed on the right track” despite the delays.
The AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine candidates are based on similar technology. They both use a different virus, called an adenovirus, which has been genetically modified so that it cannot replicate and to drive the body to produce a protein found on the surface of the coronavirus. This protein is expected to elicit an immune response that provides the vaccinated person with protection against the coronavirus. This technique has several advantages over other vaccine technologies, one of which is that the vaccine does not need to be stored in subzero temperatures, making it easier to use, particularly in the developing world, where cold storage and supply chains are limited.
But there is a key difference between the two vaccines. J&J is using a human adenovirus, one that is among the causes of the common cold, while AstraZeneca is using an adenovirus normally found in chimpanzees.
