Sanofi is partnering with HHS to develop a coronavirus vaccine, the drugmaker said Feb. 18.
Sanofi, which developed a vaccine for SARS, said it will use its recombinant DNA platform to develop the vaccine.
Sanofi said it expects to have a vaccine candidate in six months, and it could be ready to test it on people within a year to 18 months. But John Shiver, head of vaccine research and development at Sanofi, told STAT the timeline for the vaccine to be publicly available is about three to four years.
The drugmaker will work with the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, to develop a vaccine.
Neither Sanofi nor BARDA would reveal to STAT how much money the government agency plans to invest in the project.
Smaller drugmakers such as Inovio Pharmaceuticals and Moderna Therapeutics have also been working to develop a vaccine, but they don't have the large-scale production facilities needed to distribute the vaccine widely.
Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical said Feb. 6 it is also working on a coronavirus vaccine.
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