Question

1. Describe the traditional phases of vaccine development.

2. Contrast the typical vaccine development timeline with the outbreak (COVID-19) paradigm

3. List the current vaccine candidates for COVID-19 and their phase of clinical development.

4. Hypothesize 3 downsides of a streamlined vaccine development process using evidence from the NEJM article and your own critical thinking.

Answer 1

Answer 1: Development of vaccination is one of the important milestones in medication. There are three phases of the clinical development of vaccination as follows:

a. Phase I: Initial testing of vaccine in small numbers of 20 healthy adults. This phase test the properties of the vaccination, and tolerance. The important in this phase is to test safety.

b. Phase II: The test involving large number of heathy individuals. It is used to obtain the vaccine’s preliminary information on its immune capabilities.

c. Phase III: For enhanced safety this phase is conducted. Subjects are tested in mass. Before this phase the vaccine should be completely characterised and sufficiently manufactured. Based on the result of this phase, vaccine become available in the market.

Answer 2: The typical vaccine development timeline with the outbreak (COVID-19) paradigm is faster than the traditional phases. This is because of urgency in the global pandemic. The clinical trial steps will be completed in months, that usually takes a year in traditional vaccine development. Maximum risk has to be taken to stop the highly contagious disease.

Answer 3: The list of current vaccine candidates for COVID-19 and their phase of clinical development is as follows:

a. AdCOVID – Phase 1 & 2 completed

b. CroFlu – Phase 1 & 2 completed

c. LUNAR-COV19 – Preclinical

d. CureVac – Preclinical

e. PittCoVacc – Preclinical

f. DPX-COVID-19 – Preclinical

Answer 4: Vaccine development for COVID-19 is in a fast process. This has risk. Different group of people in the world has different immunity. The clinical trials should therefore be perfect and precise enough.