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> Additionally, until this brand new mRNA vaccine technology actually demonstrated efficacy it was not quite so clear cut that we should put a huge proportion o

> Additionally, until this brand new mRNA vaccine technology actually demonstrated efficacy it was not quite so clear cut that we should put a huge proportion of our resources into making more of these devices, rather than explore different vaccine platforms. I can't believe this is true. The Pfizer and Modern vaccines were clearly in the top 10 last March and April. How could you argue that given 10 months and a billion dollars each we couldn't double our microfluidic device capacity for these two vaccines.

hcknwscommenter 6y ago
You are citing phase I data to support an implication that "clearly" phase 3 data was going to be positive. That is not how it works in real life. Many many many drug candidates look great after phase 1 and fail to become approved drugs. Also, we did double our microfluidic device capacity. We more than doubled it. We increased our capacity by something like a million fold. Before these vaccines (first of their kind), there was no commercial scale capacity. This has all been invented in the last year. There was even a chance that achieving such capacity would not be possible. It is fairly common that drug candidates that look promising in phase 1 or 2 simply cannot be manufactured at scale with the quality required to ensure consistent safety and efficacy.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  Moderna and Pfizer have been in the top 10 for a while, you could easily spend an extra billion on all of them and if half don't work out that's fine.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  That’s true about many drug candidates but not these. Moderna (and Pfizer) had EXTREMELY promising results from in vitro, primate, Phase I, and Phase II results. Success by Phase III was very, very likely.
  - guyomes 6y ago
    I agree that the new drug candidates had promising results. Yet as a new technology, there was still a risk. For example, the first Pfizer drug candidate BNT162b1 gave fever to 75% of the participants in some cases [0]. Some countries decided not to buy from them at first for that reason. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7583697/figure/f3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7583697/figure/...
credit_guy 6y ago
To add to that, except for Pfizer, all the other 5 vaccine contenders chosen by the Operation Warp Speed (Moderna, J&J, Oxford-AZ, Merk, Sanofi-GSK) received money to expedite their manufacturing regardless of the vaccine being successful of not. Together they received $11 BN. What can they show for that? Excuses about microfluidics? And vials ? (did you hear the one that Moderna will start putting 15 doses in vials intended for 10, because it turn out that vials are a bottleneck too after all). They couldn't figure out the vial thing in 10 months? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies_receiving_research_funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies...

hcknwscommenter 6y ago

You are citing phase I data to support an implication that "clearly" phase 3 data was going to be positive. That is not how it works in real life. Many many many drug candidates look great after phase 1 and fail to become approved drugs. Also, we did double our microfluidic device capacity. We more than doubled it. We increased our capacity by something like a million fold. Before these vaccines (first of their kind), there was no commercial scale capacity. This has all been invented in the last year. There was even a chance that achieving such capacity would not be possible. It is fairly common that drug candidates that look promising in phase 1 or 2 simply cannot be manufactured at scale with the quality required to ensure consistent safety and efficacy.

JamesBarney 6y ago
Moderna and Pfizer have been in the top 10 for a while, you could easily spend an extra billion on all of them and if half don't work out that's fine.
Robotbeat 6y ago
That’s true about many drug candidates but not these. Moderna (and Pfizer) had EXTREMELY promising results from in vitro, primate, Phase I, and Phase II results. Success by Phase III was very, very likely.
- guyomes 6y ago
  I agree that the new drug candidates had promising results. Yet as a new technology, there was still a risk. For example, the first Pfizer drug candidate BNT162b1 gave fever to 75% of the participants in some cases [0]. Some countries decided not to buy from them at first for that reason. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7583697/figure/f3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7583697/figure/...

credit_guy 6y ago

To add to that, except for Pfizer, all the other 5 vaccine contenders chosen by the Operation Warp Speed (Moderna, J&J, Oxford-AZ, Merk, Sanofi-GSK) received money to expedite their manufacturing regardless of the vaccine being successful of not. Together they received $11 BN. What can they show for that? Excuses about microfluidics? And vials ? (did you hear the one that Moderna will start putting 15 doses in vials intended for 10, because it turn out that vials are a bottleneck too after all). They couldn't figure out the vial thing in 10 months? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies_receiving_research_funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies...