Months left in race to vaccine

Scott Morrison has foreshadowed jabs for healthcare workers and the elderly as soon as early next year.

Scott Morrison at the AstraZeneca laboratories in Macquarie Park, Sydney, on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

Scientists are increasingly confident of a coronavirus vaccine within months, paving the way for a global economic recovery in one of the largest-ever rollouts of a medical treatment.

Scott Morrison has foreshadowed jabs for healthcare workers and the elderly as soon as early next year if a University of Oxford vaccine is successful, with the vaccine’s distributor, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, pledging to sign contracts for local manufacture within weeks.

The government has guaranteed every Australian will have access to the UK vaccine for free under a deal it has clinched with AstraZeneca, with scientists labelling the Oxford vaccine one of the most promising candidates out of more than 160 vaccines being developed worldwide.

The Oxford vaccine is a frontrunner among more than 160 vaccines in development around the world.

It is a viral vector vaccine that is made from a non-replicating version of a common cold virus known as an adenovirus. The vaccine mimics a natural viral infection and prompts the body to produce viral proteins inside its own cells, triggering a T-cell response. Scientists believe viral vector vaccines have advantages over traditional protein-based vaccines in fighting COVID-19 due to the system-wide T-cell activity they induce.

But a viral vector vaccine has never been produced for use in humans before, and it presents a challenge for Australian manufacturers who would be producing the product for the first time.

China announced on Wednesday that it had patented its own adenovirus vaccine, developed by CanSino. A peer-reviewed study has shown that vaccine candidate to induce a strong immune response in human volunteers.

The University of Queensland’s vaccine candidate has entered phase 1 human trials, with Australian pharmaceutical company CSL saying it could have emergency jabs of the UQ vaccine ready by mid-next year. Another Australian vaccine, developed by Adelaide scientist Nikolai Petrovsky, is soon to move into phase 2 trials.

In the US, pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Novavax have developed leading vaccine candidates.

The Oxford vaccine has begun phase 3 human trials and if successful could be on the market before the end of the year.

“This is a new technology as far as vaccines are concerned,” said Monash University professor Colin Pouton. “It’s going to take a bit of negotiation and a bit of planning to produce one of these vaccines in Australia.”

But AstraZeneca’s local arm does not have the capacity to manufacturer the Oxford vaccine, and it’s currently in negotiations with other pharmaceutical companies including CSL over how the vaccine could be locally produced.

CSL is currently weighing up whether it has the technology and capacity to produce the Oxford vaccine onshore. It’s also considering importing the vaccine in bulk and completing a process known as “fill and finish”, where the imported vaccine is transferred into individual vials for local use.

In developing their viral vector vaccine, Oxford scientists inserted the coronavirus’s genome into a defective adenovirus, which can begin an infection in human cells but cannot replicate to develop the infection. When the vaccine is injected and the adenovirus starts to replicate, the body begins to express the SARS-CoV-2 protein. The immune system recognises the virus and develops immunity. Results from early human trials of the Oxford candidate showed that the vaccine induced a strong immune response in more than 1000 volunteers.

CSIRO undertook preclinical testing of the Oxford candidate. Trevor Drew, the director of CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, said he believed the Oxford vaccine was a frontrunner in the more than 160 vaccines currently in development.

“These vectored vaccines are very stimulatory to all of the arms of the immune system so it means you get a nice balanced response that also lays down immune system memory,” Dr Drew said.

He said he believed a COVID-19 vaccine was now a near-certainty.

“I’m confident that we will have one,” Dr Drew said. “I am sure that the vaccines that we’re currently looking at will likely be only the first generation of a series of vaccines.”

Professor Pouton said he believed at least one successful COVID-19 vaccine would be given regulatory approval somewhere in the world by the end of this year. Almost 30 vaccine candidates are now in human trials.

However, Dr Pouton said Russia’s claims to have a successful vaccine should be treated with caution.

“We will end up with an effective vaccine, even if it doesn’t come in the first round. It’s looking more and more likely that one of the vaccines or more than one of the vaccines will get approval before the end of the year.”

The Prime Minister indicated on Wednesday that the government was likely to employ coercive measures along the lines of “no jab no play” to encourage people to be vaccinated. Mr Morrison wants 95 per cent of the Australian population to be vaccinated.

Labor accused the government of overreach in announcing the Oxford vaccine deal, labelling it “an agreement within an agreement” with no guarantee that a vaccine could be manufactured within Australia.

CSL, which has signed an agreement with the University of Queensland to manufacture millions of doses of the UQ vaccine if it’s successful, said that vaccine remained its primary focus.

CSL chief executive Paul Perreault said CSL and UQ have “tightened the timeline” for the development of the protein-based vaccine, which began phase one clinical trials last month and has received funding from the Bill Gates-backed Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.