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The French Pasteur Institute said on Monday that the development of a Covid-19 vaccine with the American pharmaceutical company Merck was terminated after clinical trial results were disappointing.
The partners announced last May a commitment to develop a jab based on an existing measles vaccination, which was placed in Phase 1 clinical trials in August.
“In these first human trials, the prospective vaccine was well tolerated, but it elicited immune responses that were inferior to those observed in people who recovered naturally and to those observed in the authorized vaccines,” Pasteur Institute said.
The announcement is a further blow to hopes for a vaccine led by Frans, following recent news that the leading national pharmaceutical company Sanofi is also struggling to bring its vaccine candidate to market.
Sanofi announced in December that its cutting edge will be ready at its best by 2021, and the group is now being encouraged by the government to produce competitive vaccines already approved in Europe.
These include products from the German-American BioNTech / Pfizer and the American pharmaceutical group Moderna.
Britain has also approved the use of a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which is being evaluated by European Union regulators.
The Pasteur Institute, named after pioneering scientist Louis Pasteur, who developed a rabies vaccine in 1885, said he was working on two other Covid-19 vaccines that were not yet ready for clinical trials.
The decision to discontinue the Covid vaccine based on measles has no bearing on the continuation of research by the Pasteur Institute into two other vaccine candidates using different methodologies.
(AFP)