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Federal spending on COVID-19 vaccine candidates tops $9 billion, spread among 7 companies
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The federal government has allocated more than $9 billion to develop and manufacture candidate vaccines. More than $2.5 billion more has been earmarked for vials to store the vaccines, syringes to deliver them, and on efforts to ramp up manufacturing and capacity.
And they're not done yet.
So far, the largest sums have gone to pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and a collaboration between Sanofi and GSK, as well as biotech firms Moderna and Novavax – all of which have candidate vaccines being tested in people.
To save time in the development process, the companies have been running trials simultaneously that they usually run in sequence.
Moderna, for instance, hasn't yet published its phase 2 trial results, but is already in larger-scale phase 3 trials, beginning tests last week of its candidate vaccine in 15,000 volunteers. Phase 3 trials started this summer are expected to return results this fall, with the timing depending on how quickly they can find volunteers.
None of the candidate vaccines use the whole virus, so they cannot cause COVID-19. Instead, they train the immune system to respond to the virus' spike protein – which gives the coronavirus its distinctive shape. Once the immune system is trained to recognize the spike protein, it should be able to rapidly clear the virus should the person be exposed again.
The vaccine candidates now receiving government funding are all based on new technologies, most of which have not been the basis of previously approved vaccines. They have been chosen because they were faster to develop than more conventional vaccines, which is important in fighting a virus currently killing about 1,000 Americans a day....
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