Robin Shattock, who is leading the vaccine research at Imperial, said the advantage of their vaccine is the small amount required: their dose is one-hundredth of the dose being tested by the NIH and Moderna Inc. That means millions of doses could be relatively quickly manufactured.
The company pledged Tuesday to invest 610 million euros in a vaccine production site and a new vaccine research center in France, to be able to produce in greater scale and “quickly respond to future pandemic risks.” Last month, Sanofi prompted outrage in France by promising to give the United States first access to the company’s eventual vaccine, because the U.S. had invested more in its research. Sanofi later backtracked and said it would be available in all countries.Macron has pushed for vaccines to be considered a “common good” for humanity that must not be subject to market pressures.
Dr. Doug Brown, chief executive of the British Society for Immunology, said the technology used by Imperial College London should theoretically lead to long-term immunity against the coronavirus but now needs to go through rigorous testing. He was not linked to the trial. Shattock said the Imperial vaccine, if effective, would not be licensed to any particular pharmaceutical, but various manufacturing partners around the world would be given permission to produce it as part of a “social business” that does not make any profits.