Front Burner - Coronavirus: The race to find a vaccine

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

With no clear end in sight, the urgent race for a vaccine is on across the world. This week, hopes for a vaccine grew as some biotech players are seemingly making progress. But, some experts caution that this process cannot be rushed - and that we are still far from seeing a vaccine on the market.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi everyone, Jamie here. So in a moment I'm going to be speaking with Adam Miller, who you are probably getting to know by now. But first, quickly, two huge stories of the day. First, non-essential border crossings into Canada from the US, they're going to be restricted. Over the past few days, I've spoken to President Trump about what we can do to slow the spread of COVID-19. And we have

agreed that both Canada and the United States will temporarily restrict all non-essential travel across the Canada-U.S. border. The second big story is an $82 billion federal aid package aimed at helping Canadians and businesses during this crisis. Stuff like income supports, wage subsidies, and then $55 billion more in tax deferrals. There is so much going on in that story that we thought it was best suited to our longer morning episodes. So tomorrow you'll hear my conversation with our senior business correspondent, Peter Armstrong. So what are we going to do tonight? Well, let's take a look at the high-stakes search for a vaccine and effective treatment drugs. This is FrontBurner.

Adam Miller, senior writer for CBC's Health Unit. Hello. Hi. Okay, so today we want to focus on a question that is top of people's minds. With no clear end in sight to this pandemic, some people are wondering when a vaccine will be ready. And I know this week, the first person has been injected with a trial vaccine in Seattle. And tell me about this trial and its significance. This is definitely a huge milestone, right? And it could help us find a vaccine for COVID-19. But, you know, we got to keep it in perspective. It doesn't mean that we'll develop one quickly. And the current estimates are, you know, at least a year out is what we're saying. So with this trial, though, they've injected a

healthy woman in Seattle with this vaccine, and they plan to have 45 volunteers in the coming weeks. And it's being developed by the US National Institutes of Health and also a private company called Moderna okay so that's something important to keep in mind because whenever you've got a private company that's developing a vaccine obviously we saw their stocks shoot up this week you know they have a private interest in developing this and and you got to kind of see through the hype a little bit, right? So this clinical trial in Seattle is happening remarkably quickly. And it

shows that researchers are racing to develop a vaccine, given how fast we've seen the virus spread around the world. Are there any concerns with trying to develop it so quickly? I know you mentioned that typically a vaccine takes about a year. I know the EU Commission's president says it could be on the market within six months. It can be really risky to rush something like this, right? Usually it takes years to do the animal and human testing to make sure the vaccine not only works, but that it's also safe for humans. So one thing I want to point out, though, is that the researchers in Seattle are using a really radical technique. Usually, you would inject a person with a weakened version of a virus so that our body can kind of learn to fight it off like with a flu vaccine, right? But this study isn't actually using the virus at all. So on the

one hand, there's no way that participants could actually get infected, but it's complicated. Researchers are trying to trigger the body to generate its own sort of particles of the virus that could then cause this immune response to fight off COVID-19 that they could then use in a vaccine. But it's really risky because they're going directly to human trials before animal trials are done, which is not something that's ever usually done. And it's a risky, rushed clinical trial by a private company. So we got to kind of keep all that in perspective. But at the same time, we've never seen anything like this. And I think, you know, we could see something sooner than a year. We couldn't, but it's really unprecedented. So we just really need to watch this closely. So this woman who was the first human recipient of this trial and the other people who have

volunteered for this, is it sort of unprecedented what they've put themselves forward for? Yeah, it's pretty amazing to see, you know, 45 people stand up and say, I'll do this. Again, they're not at huge risk because it's not North America. And now we've got this group, and then there's other research groups that are doing the same thing and rushing these clinical trials. So yeah, it's pretty amazing to see. I just think we need to keep it in context and just really monitor it and see where we get. And I know this particular trial is certainly not the only effort underway you mentioned. and I believe there are like 35 companies and academic institutions as well, racing to create a vaccine. And what can you tell us about the global effort right now? There are dozens of research groups around

the world trying to do this. There's another candidate vaccine made by a company called Inovio that's expected to start safety testing in the U.S. and China and South Korea next month. And there's a lot of money being raised around the world for this research, too. There's this international group called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations that's investing more than $23 million for COVID-19 vaccines. And the Canadian government as well, they've announced $2.7 million in funding for vaccine candidates. So in Canada, there are teams at McMaster University, the University of Manitoba, Dalhousie, and a biotech company in Quebec that's also working

really hard to do this, just to name a few. But we really need to be careful when we hear reports of vaccine candidates and trials that are underway because they could still be ineffective or even unsafe along the way, right? Yeah. I know that we often draw comparisons to SARS with this virus. They're both coronaviruses. But there is no vaccine for SARS. And so why all these years later, is there no vaccine for SARS? This is kind of frustrating. So after SARS in 2003, researchers were working really hard to develop a vaccine, kind of like what we're dealing with right now with COVID-19. But basically what happened was SARS died out because we were able to contain it. It killed close to 800 people around the world. But when SARS was no longer a threat, a lot of the research funding dried up and it

wasn't considered a priority anymore. The difference between SARS and COVID-19 is that SARS was much easier to identify and it wasn't nearly as contagious. People got really sick with it. They were isolated quickly and that sort of stopped the spread of it. We saw a lot of healthcare workers get sick with it, but that's because they were treating the patients. It's not something that spread to the general population as easily as COVID-19 does. So that's why there's this huge push to develop vaccine right now. But if we had kept that funding for that research in a SARS vaccine, I mean, we could have been much further along in developing something for COVID-19. Is it possible, though, that we could never see a vaccine developed for COVID-19?

Yeah, I mean, it's a possibility. We're kind of in uncharted waters right now. We don't want to raise our expectations. We want to be realistic, but at the same time, there's a lot of smart people working around the world on this, and we could see something developed in the next few months or over a year from now. One thing to keep in mind, though,

is that we really rely on evidence-based drugs and vaccines in our healthcare system. So even a trial like this in Seattle without animal testing being done first is, like, unprecedented. Who's making that decision, you know, the decision to sort of bypass some of these steps in Seattle, for example?

Yeah, I mean, in that specific study, they're working in partnership with a federal government institution. So, you know, there's this huge push. I think it's coming from the federal government, right? Like, I think the researchers know that they need to get this done quickly. There's huge pressure on them to do this as we see more and more cases in the U.S. and in Canada and around the world every day. So skipping a couple steps to try and get something out there that can work. Huh. I also wanted to ask you a question about immunity here.

So we know that many people who get COVID-19 will experience mild symptoms. They will recover. And does that mean that once you get it, you could become immune to it? Yeah. I mean, there's still research being done on this as well. We've seen, you know, the numbers of recovered people aren't in the headlines as much as the number of infected people, but there are, you know, thousands of people that have recovered from this as well. I know in Canada, we've only had like nine or so recoveries, but that's because the virus sticks

around for a couple of weeks. So, you know, as we're seeing more cases and more deaths, we're hopefully seeing more recovered as well. But that's a really good point. I think immunity is key here. That's something, you know, in addition to a vaccine, we're also going to be looking at immunity in the general population so that we can develop antivirals. And it'll also help us develop a vaccine if we can figure out who's immune to this and why, you know. Right. Because some people might be immune to it and others might not be. Okay. You also talked about developing antivirals, which would essentially be like a treatment. So instead of a vaccine, we're talking about ways to treat this virus so people don't get

as sick. And I know that medical authorities in China say a drug used in Japan appears to have been effective in treating patients who have COVID-19. And can you tell me more about this? If we had an effective treatment for COVID-19 right now, it'd be super helpful in the short term until we get to a point where we can have a safe and effective vaccine. There are a number of treatment options that are being looked at right now. The one you mentioned is this Japanese flu drug called favipiravir. So health officials in China are saying it's effective in treating COVID-19 patients, but we really don't know if that's true yet. Patients who got the drug reportedly tested negative in four days after

testing positive on average, but you know, that's really promising. But the company that makes the drug hasn't confirmed those rumors. And again, we need to wait for the research to back it up. There's also reports that the drug may not be effective in patients with really severe symptoms as well. So that's something important to keep in mind. But there are other treatments out there right now that we're looking at, you know, anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis, HIV drugs, malaria drugs. We're looking at a lot of different stuff, researchers are, to try to figure out if there's a treatment that we can use in the short term that could buy us some time until a vaccine's made. Right. And of course, it could help people alleviate some of their symptoms, could possibly make it so that not as many people have to go on respirators, which would help our healthcare system. This would be like a big game changer.

Yeah, exactly. That's why this huge race is on right now. So looking ahead here, if and when a vaccine is approved, it will obviously be needed in massive quantities, right? And so what challenges could that bring? Yeah, so I mean, scaling up a vaccine that's proven to be safe and effective is going to be one of the biggest challenges. It takes time to research a drug like this and prove that it's safe, but creating enough of it to treat thousands of people around the world slows things down even more. I mean, keep in mind that the majority of vaccine candidates fail. So even if we do create one that's successful, it's going to take like this monumental effort to make it readily available around the world quickly enough to

have an effect. We also need to be really careful in monitoring the people who get it because of how rushed these clinical trials are. And, you know, it's likely not going to happen fast enough to help with our current pandemic. So there's really interesting research being done. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Right now in China to develop what's called serological testing. They can determine if there are people in the community

that have a natural immunity to COVID-19. And like I said, that can really help with the research, but also with treatments as well. That's being done in China. And the WHO said last week, we're a few weeks out. So, you know, fingers crossed that we'll see some progress made there, alleviating the symptoms and helping people really protect themselves against the virus until we get to a point where we have a vaccine and we can really get a hold on this thing. Okay, Adam, thank you so much. This is all really fascinating. We'll talk to you really soon. Thank you so much. Okay, thanks, Jamie. All right, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Tomorrow morning,

we're going to be talking about the massive aid package that the government delivered today. So stay tuned, and we'll talk to you soon.