COVID-19 Vaccines: Global Challenges and Prospects Forum Recommendations.
Boudjelal M., Almajed F., Salman AM., Alharbi NK., Colangelo M., Michelotti JM., Olinger G., Baker M., Hill AVS., Alaskar A.
Perspective On November 4 and 5, 2020 the 11th Annual KAIMRC Global Forum was organized as a G20 related event entitled COVID-19 Vaccines: Global Challenges and Prospects, https://globalcovid19vaccines.com. It was a vital event that provided a hub for leading COVID-19 scientists, regulators, pharmaceutical representative, funders and charities to learn about COVID-19 vaccines in development, discuss different vaccine candidates, make recommendations, highlight lessons learned and address appropriate plans for global distribution and pricing. Over 10,000 people from 94 countries attended the forum. The leading COVID-19 vaccines presented use different technologies including: (a) Non-replicating viral vector based vaccines, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19/AZD1222 vaccine developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca (van Doremalen et al., 2020), the Sputnik V developed by the Russian Gamaleya Institute consisting of two components, a recombinant adenovirus type 26 (rAd26) vector and a recombinant adenovirus type 5 (rAd5) vector (Logunov et al., 2020), and the Ad26.COV2.S developed by Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, at Harvard Medical School in collaboration with Janssen Vaccines and Prevention BV, Leiden (Mercado et al., 2020). (b) Nucleic Acid, DNA- or RNA- based Vaccines that include the mRNA-1273 vaccine that is being developed by Moderna (Anderson et al., 2020), and a self-amplifying (saRNA) vaccine termed VGHsa111 developed by Imperial College, London as well as another co-developed by Pfizer and Biontech. An example of a DNA based vaccine against COVID19 is INO-4800 that is being developed by Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Smith et al., 2020). (c) Protein based vaccines, CoV RBD219-N1 Vaccine from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas that is based on a yeast-derived (Pichia pastoris) protein (Hotez and Bottazzi, 2020) and from Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd (Dai et al., 2020). Representatives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Bring Hope Humanitarian Foundation (BHHF), and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), presented their plans for distributing the vaccines to people in need around the world including the low-income countries. They are also developing educational programs to train health workers in immunization procedures.