Is Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 Vaccine Better Than AstraZeneca’s? Is Pfizer’s vaccine superior to SinoVac’s? Now maybe we can find out.
In the coming weeks, the world may begin to see the first results of several advanced-stage human clinical trials. But it still doesn’t answer the question: which vaccine is really the best?
CEPI, the international public-private partnership dedicated to helping the production of vaccines that can stop global epidemics, said it was establishing uniform testing procedures in five laboratories around the world that will allow for homogeneous comparisons between Covid candidate vaccines. 19.
The measure is significant because so far attempts to compare published results of immune response in blood samples from those who participated in the first human vaccine trials have been hampered by a lack of standardized tests, protocols and equipment. This has frustrated some vaccine researchers.
“There is no way to make direct comparisons, as different laboratories can use different measures to infer immune response,” said Richard Hatchett, former director of the US Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority.
The new laboratories are located in the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, India and Bangladesh. The UK laboratory, led by the government agency Public Health England, is also coordinating with Nexelis, a biotech company in Canada, and will supply the reagents used by all laboratories in the network.
By using the same standardized reagents and protocols, the new labs will also allow some candidate vaccines to achieve approval more quickly, if a vaccine that is being tested with the standardized protocol shows an immune response that is better than another already tested candidate vaccine.
The new vaccine would still have to be tested for safety, but having the comparison data could speed its approval, experts say.
On the other hand, if a vaccine showed much lower immunogenicity than one already approved, it could be an indication that efforts on the second vaccine candidate should be abandoned.
Hatchett said that never before has a standardized protocol and designated laboratory network been established so quickly.
