Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson has said that a candidate for the COVID-19 vaccine the company is developing will not be ready in 2021.
“This vaccine will not be ready this year, but it could be useful at a later stage, especially if the fight against variants continues.” Reuters reported Hudson told the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
The CEO did not give other details, according to the press.
Hill contacted the company for comments.
Sanofi has collaborated with the US company Translate Bio in June last year to develop the vaccine based on mRNA technology. Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – both of which have been licensed for emergency use in the United States – also use this technology.
Reuters reported that clinical trials of the company’s vaccine should begin this quarter, and Sanofi said in December that “the earliest potential approval” of the vaccine was the second half of 2021.
Sanofi announced in December that the interim results of a 1/2 phase clinical trial with a separate vaccine he is developing with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in the UK showed that the candidate produced a low immune response in older adults. At the time, the company said the low immune response may be due to insufficient antigen levels.
The company plans to begin a phase 2b study with this vaccine this month, a move that will delay its availability until sometime in the second half of 2021.
The news comes after Sanofi announced in end of January that it will help Pfizer and BioNTech produce doses of their vaccine at its facilities in Frankfurt, Germany, starting this summer.