Covid: Sanofi’s French vaccine will arrive too late for the 3rd dose – The HuffPost

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Another quack for Sanofi whose vaccine will arrive too late for the 3rd dose (illustrative photo taken in Spain in July 2021).

CORONAVIRUS – The French anti-Covid vaccine is not about to see the light of day. After abandoning his vaccine project at Messenger RNA, the other vaccine candidate against the Covid-19 from the laboratory Sanofi is late. Initially expected by the end of the year, the final results of its clinical trial should finally be published in the first quarter of 2022.

Sanofi’s vaccine will therefore be lagging behind the schedule for the vaccine booster, while the appointment to perform a third dose are stormed. Olivier Véran announced the goal 20 million booster doses injected by December 25.

The group, which is developing this recombinant protein-based vaccine with the British GSK, unveiled interim results deemed positive as a booster dose on Wednesday, December 15, but it does not give a precise timetable for its marketing.

Promising results

“We will bring this vaccine next year. If it is for a third dose, it will be a third dose, ”Olivier Bogillot, France president of Sanofi, told AFP on Wednesday. “We are no longer in a race for speed. (…) We can see that the virus is here for a long time. We will have a French vaccine, ”he continued.

A single booster dose of the vaccine candidate from Sanofi and GSK “made it possible to obtain strong immune responses”, argues the laboratory in a press release. The results of this test indeed show a multiplication of the order of 9 to 43 in neutralizing antibodies, regardless of the vaccine received as a primary vaccination.

In addition, the global phase 3 trial, in primary vaccination, is continuing, according to the recommendation of the Independent Committee for Surveillance and Data Monitoring, until early 2022, in order to collect more data.

Sanofi criticized against its competitors Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna

The juggernaut is expected, while the France has so far failed to market a vaccine against Covid-19. After an initial period of 6 months, the group had counted on the final results of the clinical trial at the end of 2021, for marketing in early 2022.

Sanofi, one of the world leaders in non-Covid vaccines, has been widely criticized against its competitors Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which launched their vaccine using messenger RNA technology as early as December 2020.

But Sanofi opted for a different technology, with a recombinant protein vaccine, which uses the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as an antigen to help the body recognize the virus.

Sanofi was also developing another vaccine, messenger RNA, which it nevertheless decided to abandon at the end of September, judging that it would arrive too late for the pandemic.

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