Anthony Fauci, a leading expert in the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, expressed cautious optimism on Tuesday that several successful vaccine candidates would prove effective “within a reasonable period of time” to fight the novel pathogen.
But how long the protection from an eventual vaccine might last is “a big unknown,” he said via remote video during The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Health Conference. A short duration of protection could create additional challenges, he said.
It is conceivable that “there will be a vaccine that is protective,” said Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an immunologist who has dedicated much of his career to the search for an HIV vaccine. “I think there will be several candidates that will arrive at that goal at approximately the same time.”
He said “we are really optimistic we’re going to be able to be successful” with a coronavirus vaccine NIAID has been developing with the biotech company Moderna Inc. The vaccine showed positive signs in an early study, though it has more testing to go.
What gives Dr. Fauci hope for vaccines to fend off the virus, he said, is that many people have naturally been able to rid themselves of it and recover. The human body mounts an effective immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, unlike with other infectious diseases such as HIV, he said.
“Given that the body can make a good response against coronavirus, we feel cautiously optimistic that if we mimic safely natural infection with our vaccine, we will be able to induce a response in a person that would be equivalent to the response that natural infection induces,” Dr. Fauci said.
Yet he cautioned that it isn’t clear how long such a vaccine-induced immunity would last, and that people might need booster shots. People don’t mount long-lasting immunity to other coronaviruses that cause benign common colds, he said.
“What is a big unknown is what the durability of that protection is,” he said. “Is it going to be a year, two years or even maybe, unfortunately, six months or less?”
If that is the case, he said, then companies and public health officials would face the challenge of delivering doses repeatedly. “Then we have a secondary problem. We may have overcome the first problem of getting a vaccine, but then you’re in a logistic situation,” he said.
Health workers and those who are most vulnerable, including the elderly and people with underlying conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure or obesity, would likely be prioritized once vaccines become available, Dr. Fauci said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government entities will play a role initially in distributing the scarce vaccines when they first enter the market, he added, but the distribution will “almost certainly” be handed over to the companies as they start to produce vaccines in large quantities.
Drug companies are racing to develop treatments and vaccines to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, but industry executives warned at the conference that any single early success won’t likely be enough on its own to stop the virus.
Executives said that combinations of different drugs might be most effective in treating Covid-19, and that more than one successful vaccine would be needed to vaccinate billions of people around the world. Even if new drugs or vaccines become available this year, it’s possible that later entrants would improve upon their effectiveness, they said.
“There may well be different generations of either vaccines or therapeutics, or we may need multiple complementary approaches,” said David Reese, executive vice president of research and development at Amgen.
“One thing we should probably get away from is the notion that there is going to be a single silver bullet,” he said, adding that instead there will likely be “a set of approaches that ultimately control the pandemic.”
Amgen has a partnership with Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. to develop antibody-based therapies with potential to treat and prevent Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The work is based on identifying naturally occurring antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered from the disease.
Dr. Reese said Amgen hopes to begin testing the antibody therapy in people in coming months. But he said it’s possible that research would show the most effective treatment is a combination of antibodies with other types of drugs, such as antivirals. The multidrug “cocktail” approach has been successful in combating HIV and certain cancers, he noted.
Companies are developing vaccines to give to healthy people to prevent infection, with some companies saying they could have initial supplies in the fall if human studies are successful.
“No company will be able to supply the whole planet,” Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said during the conference. “We’re going to need maybe four, five, six vaccines approved to be able to supply the planet.”
Moderna has been developing an experimental coronavirus vaccine at a fast pace, last month reporting what it said were promising early results, with more testing under way. Mr. Bancel said the company plans to start a clinical trial in July with thousands of people, some of whom would get the experimental vaccine and some a placebo.
The study will aim to demonstrate whether the vaccine protects people from infection, and results could be ready in the fall, he said.
Merck & Co. is developing two experimental coronavirus vaccines through collaborative efforts the company disclosed last week. Julie Gerberding, a Merck executive vice president and chief patient officer, said Tuesday that the company expects clinical trials to start this year.
Dr. Gerberding said Merck will pursue development of the vaccines on the fastest possible timeline, but she cautioned that finding a safe and effective vaccine could take time.
“Being fast is really important right now, and I hope and pray that the early starters will have something to contribute,” she said. “But we’re also looking for the best vaccines. And the best vaccines might not be the first vaccines. So I think it’s important that we do the science and get these things progressed.”
She said she is concerned about safety particularly because a coronavirus vaccine would be given to people with poor immunological response to vaccines, such as the elderly or young children.
Write to Brianna Abbott at brianna.abbott@wsj.com and Peter Loftus at peter.loftus@wsj.com
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Fauci ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ About Coronavirus Vaccine - The Wall Street Journal
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