Geneticist on vaccine race: Beating competition less important than raw numbers early on

MOSCOW (MIPT) — The race for producing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines is accelerating. Following the Pfizer-BioNTech announcement that came two weeks ago, yesterday U.K.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca claimed that its COVID-19 vaccine was 70% effective in trials and could reach 90% efficiency, making it a potential third certified anti-coronavirus shot, with rival Moderna already preparing to fill and package its product in France according to a deal reached earlier today.

Pavel Volchkov, the head of the MIPT Genome Engineering Lab, comments: “We are going to see some tough competition as far as vaccine promotion and publicity goes. This is a huge market, and everyone wants a share in it. That said, next year will be marked by a dire shortage of vaccines, so direct competition will be a secondary priority. It’s more about who can rapidly launch mass production, scaling it up to millions of doses. This is what matters. Pfizer says it is about to churn out 100 million doses. Believe me, this is not trivial, and quite challenging for a giant such as Pfizer.”

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Pavel Volchkov, PhD, heads the MIPT Genome Engineering Lab which focuses on genome editing research mediated by the CRISPR/Cas technology. You can reach him by contacting Alena Akimova [email protected] or Nicolas Posunko [email protected] at the MIPT Press Office.