Dr. Thomas Campbell, who is overseeing the test site at UCHealth, Colorado, said he received more than 2,000 emails and hundreds of calls from would-be volunteers. He said enthusiasm for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines has increased interest in getting immunized, but its scarcity is driving some people to research other options. News of the Novavax test in Britain has also heightened enthusiasm: 224 people have already signed up on its website.
“Being in a clinical trial of an experimental vaccine leads to a vaccine earlier, potentially, than they would otherwise,” he said.
If Novavax is successful, the new vaccine could expand the vaccine portfolio in the United States in late spring. Moderna and Pfizer have agreements with the United States to supply 400 million doses, enough to vaccinate 200 million people, by the middle of the year, and the two companies are in talks to supply another 100 million doses each after that.
Johnson & Johnson, which recently reported that its single-dose vaccine was effective in a major trial in the United States, may receive authorization this month, but may not be able to supply the United States in significant numbers until April. AstraZeneca’s trial in the United States is also underway and the company has an agreement to provide Americans with 300 million doses of its double vaccine.
But any number of obstacles can hinder Novavax’s progress. As other vaccines become more widely available, participants in the Novavax study may withdraw from the study. Even if its results in Britain were promising, the US study could produce different results. Or the company may fail to prove to regulators that it can safely 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 either under pressure to act quickly or risk losing ground to competitors.
Novavax, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, struggled for years to launch a successful product on the market, and by 2019 its shares were being traded so low that it was at risk of being withdrawn from Nasdaq. Then, last spring and summer, two big deals saved him from sinking. In May, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations awarded the company up to $ 388 million to make its Covid vaccine available globally. In July, she was selected by the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed program to develop and sell her vaccine to the United States. In late summer, the company reported encouraging results in preliminary studies.
But the company struggled last fall to begin testing in the United States until its previous October target. Novavax invested heavily in manufacturing, establishing factories around the world. But making these vaccines is a painstaking and unpredictable process, even for experienced drug makers, and Novavax had trouble scaling beyond the smaller batches needed for the first tests.