AstraZeneca to work on vaccine with Russia’s Gamaleya

A laboratory technician oversees the filling and packaging tests for the large-scale manufacture and delivery of the Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate AZD1222, which was conducted on a high-capacity aseptic vial filling line in Catalent, Anagni, Italy on September 11, 2020.

Vincenzo Pinto | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said Friday it would soon be working with Russia’s Gamaleya Institute to investigate whether the two coronavirus vaccine candidates could be successfully combined.

After the developers of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine reached out to AstraZeneca on Twitter late last month, they asked if they should try combining the two to make the vaccine more effective.

“The ability to combine different COVID-19 vaccines can be helpful to improve protection and / or accessibility of vaccines. Therefore, it is important to study different vaccine combinations to make vaccination programs more flexible and to allow doctors more choice at the time of vaccine administration, “AstraZeneca said in a statement Friday.

“It is also likely that combining vaccines over a longer period of time will result in improved immunity,” he added.

AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, made in partnership with Oxford University, is one of several looking to seek drug regulatory approval as hopes of a mass vaccination campaign to end the pandemic grow.

To date, more than 69 million people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus, with 1.58 million deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“The combined evaluation of different types of COVID-19 vaccines could help unleash synergies in protection and improve vaccine accessibility and could offer an additional approach to overcoming this deadly virus,” said AstraZeneca.

The Russian direct investment fund, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund that financed the development of Sputnik V, said clinical trials of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, combined with its own, would begin by the end of the month.

“AstraZeneca’s decision to conduct clinical trials with one of two Sputnik V vectors to increase the effectiveness of its own vaccine is an important step in uniting efforts to combat the pandemic,” said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russian direct investment fund said in a statement.

“We welcome the start of this new phase of collaboration between vaccine manufacturers. We are determined to expand this partnership in the future and begin joint production after the new vaccine has proven its effectiveness in clinical trials,” said Dmitriev.

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