Pfizer and BioNTech start late-stage study of lead Covid-19 shot

Pfizer and BioNTech SE said they’ve begun a later-stage trial for their top coronavirus vaccine candidate and set a goal of submitting it for regulatory review as soon as October — one of the most ambitious timelines to date.

 

The move pushes the New York-based pharmaceutical giant and its German partner closer to bringing a vaccine to market, and places them alongside frontrunners like Moderna Inc, which anno­unced earlier Monday that it had started its own large, final-stage trial of a shot based on similar technology.

 

Pfizer and BioNTech said that they had selected a lead vaccine candidate from within a broader development programme and will proceed with a later-stage safety and efficacy trial of the experimental shot in a two-dose regimen. The announcement came in anticipation of Pfizer reporting second-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

 

Governments around the world are now looking to lock up supplies of the still-experimental candidates.

 

Each has hopes of stabil­ising local economies and stopping spread of the virus that’s taken more than 650,000 lives globally. Last week, Pfizer and BioNTech clinc­hed a $2 billion deal to supply an initial 100 million doses of a vaccine to the US. That set a price ceiling of less than $20 per dose, which will likely impact how much others will charge.