Dr Thomas Campbell, who oversees the trial site at UCHealth in Colorado, said he had received more than 2,000 emails and hundreds of calls from prospective volunteers. He said excitement over the Pfizer and Modern vaccines had sparked interest in being immunized, but the scarcity led some people to explore other options. The news about the trial of Novavax in Britain has also increased enthusiasm: 224 people have subscribed to its website so far.
“If they are in a clinical trial of an experimental vaccine, they could, possibly, be brought to a vaccine sooner than they would otherwise do,” he said.
If Novavax is successful, the new vaccine could add a larger portfolio of shots in the United States by late spring. Moderna and Pfizer have agreed with the United States to deliver 400 million doses by the middle of the year, enough to fully vaccinate 200 million people, and both companies are in talks to deliver another 100 million doses thereafter.
Johnson & Johnson, which recently reported that the vaccine vaccine was effective in a major U.S. trial, may be authorized this month, but can only supply a significant amount to the United States in April. AstraZeneca’s US trial is also underway, and the company has an agreement to provide Americans with 300 million doses of its two-vaccine.
But any number of obstacles can advance Novavax’s progress. As other vaccines become more widely available, participants in the Novavax trial may drop out of the trial. Although the results in Britain were promising, the American study was able to yield different results. Or the company can not prove regulators that it can reliably manufacture its vaccine on a large scale. Given the likelihood that the United States will soon have three authorized vaccines available to the public, the company is under pressure to move quickly or risk losing participants.
Novavax, based in Gaithersburg, MD, has struggled for years to bring a successful product to market, and in 2019 the stock traded so low that it was in danger of being removed from the Nasdaq. Then, last spring and summer, two major deals saved it from going down. In May, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations awarded the company up to $ 388 million to make its Covid vaccine available worldwide. In July, it was selected by the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed program to develop and sell the vaccine to the United States. Later in the summer, the company reported encouraging results in feasibility studies.
But the company struggled last fall to begin the U.S. trial against its earlier October target. Novavax has put a huge gamble on manufacturing and erecting plants worldwide. But producing these vaccines is a difficult and unpredictable process, even for experienced drug manufacturers, and Novavax has struggled to grow beyond the smaller quantities needed for early trials.