- The Covid-19 vaccine has led years to vaccine science, said the CEO of Pfizer, and now it is time to use advances for other viral diseases, such as the flu.
- “We will be able to provide medical solutions for other devastating diseases,” said the CEO.
- The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine used a new method with messenger RNA to initiate the immune response. Moderna’s vaccine also used mRNA.
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Covid-19 immunization has advanced vaccine science for years, and now it’s time to use these advances “for the best of humanity,” Pfizer President and Chief Executive Albert Bourla said at a conference organized by JPMorgan on Tuesday. -market.
“We have accumulated scientific knowledge and technology and know-how over the years,” he said. “We developed an infrastructure that would normally take years to develop.”
Pfizer developed its Covid-19 vaccine, which is 95% effective in fighting the virus, with BioNTech, whose co-founder Ugur Sahin developed the vaccine in just a few hours last January, according to a podcast by Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal . The vaccine uses messenger RNA, a genetic material that tells cells how to make proteins. The mRNA was never used in a vaccine approved by the FDA.
Read More: How pharmaceutical giant Pfizer teamed up with a little-known biotechnology company to develop the first authorized coronavirus vaccine in record time
The Pfizer vaccine works by injecting a small piece of coronavirus mRNA into the body that encodes the virus’s spike protein. This protein is what helps the virus to bind and invade cells, and is what antibodies target. Thus, the vaccine stimulates the body to produce the spike protein internally to trigger the same immune response.
With all the know-how developed in creating the vaccine with BioNTech, “we will be able to provide medical solutions for other devastating diseases,” said Bourla.
Burla also said that the company will seek new paths for its pipeline later this year. He noted the flu vaccine as one of those pathways, along with other viral illnesses.
“We think mRNA can completely disrupt the flu market because you can do things in weeks instead of months,” said Bourla. “So, as the flu market is changing each year with a new variant, this technology is ideal for being able to adjust to the latest news from the current force and be much more effective as a result.”
Moderna’s vaccine, which has a similar rate of effectiveness in combating Covid-19, also uses mRNA to initiate the immune response. Both vaccines were approved last year with millions of people already receiving immunization, although the launch has been slow. At JPMorgan’s conference, Moderna said it would deliver between 600 million and 1 billion doses in 2021, and Pfizer said it expected to produce 2 billion this year.