Prophylactic vaccines lagging, only counting for 31% of for COVID-19 drug pipeline, says GlobalData
The COVID-19 pandemic that has swept the globe has led to a massive search for a drug with which to combat this deadly virus. Yet, despite many pharmaceutical companies continuing to pour their resources into a cure, the development of prophylactic vaccines for COVID-19 appears to be lagging, which may hamper future plans to halt the spread of this virus says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
According to GlobalData’s Pharma Intelligence Center Pipeline Database and the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) dashboard, there were 80 therapeutic drugs in Phases I, II, and III as of 23 April that may be able to treat COVID-19, but only nine prophylactic vaccine drugs in Phases I and II. This indicates that while a possible cure for COVID-19 may be imminent, a prophylactic vaccine to combat the pandemic may need more time to come to fruition.
Quentin Horgan, Analyst for the Drugs Databases at GlobalData, comments: “The response from pharma and biotech companies globally to find a COVID-19 vaccine has contributed to 438 unique drugs to treat COVID-19: 298 therapeutic drugs and 140 prophylactic vaccines, spread across all stages of development (discovery, preclinical, Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III). This is especially remarkable considering that the virus was only identified at the beginning of this year. The lack of late stage prophylactic vaccines is most probably due to the difficulties in developing a vaccine for the coronavirdae family of vaccines, which includes SARS ad MERS, but still does not bode well for governments trying to combat the virulence and spread of COVID-19 within their respective countries ”
