Several Pharmaceutical Companies Are Racing To Develop a Coronavirus Vaccine

"The race for a vaccine to combat the new coronavirus is moving faster than researchers and drugmakers expected," reported Dow Jones News Services this week, "with Pfizer Inc. joining several other groups saying that they had accelerated the timetable for testing and that a vaccine could be ready for emergency use in the fall."

Pfizer said Tuesday it will begin testing of its experimental vaccine in the U.S. as early as next week. On Monday, Oxford University researchers said their vaccine candidate could be available for emergency use as early as September if it passes muster in studies, while biotech Moderna Inc. said it was preparing to enter its vaccine into the second phase of human testing... If the vaccine shows signs of working safely in the study, Moderna said the third and final phase of testing could start in the fall. The company said it could seek FDA approval to sell the vaccine by year's end, if it succeeds in testing...

Merck & Co., a longtime maker of vaccines, said it is talking to potential partners about three different technologies to manufacture coronavirus vaccines... Johnson & Johnson said earlier this month it shaved months off the usual timelines for developing a vaccine, and expects to start human testing of a coronavirus candidate as soon as September, with possible availability on an emergency-use basis in early 2021.

SFGate also reports that GlaxoSmithKline and the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi "expect their vaccine will be ready for human testing in the second half of 2020."

And the Associated Press notes that America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "is tracking at least 86 active different approaches among pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers and scientists around the globe." Dr. Peter Marks, director of the agency's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, adds "We expect about two dozen more to enter clinical trials by this summer and early fall."