How a cheaper, easier-to-make COVID vaccine could lift up the world

Good afternoon, readers. I hope those who celebrate had a restful, and safe, Easter weekend.

There are no shortage of technologies being used in the construction of COVID vaccines. From the brand new (but also not all that brand new) mRNA technologies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to more conventional types, pharmaceutical firms are taking a multi-pronged approach to this battle. There’s a new entrant on the horizon, and it could seriously change the course of the pandemic in developing nations.

It’s a developmental COVID vaccine called NDV-HXP-S, which is entering trials in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to the New York Times. It’s significant because it could be produced in one of the most conventional mediums for vaccines: Chicken eggs.

Chicken eggs are a critical part of the production of influenza vaccines annually. And that’s where the promise lies: It’s far easier to scale up manufacturing using this method, and manufacturing facilities in developing nations are more up to the task. That could theoretically lead to the production of more than one billion doses per year.

The different underlying technologies used to develop vaccines have different strengths and weaknesses. An mRNA-based vaccine, for instance, may be more modifiable to address variant coronavirus strains since it takes the vaccine manufacturing process a step back in a sense, relying more on the genomics of the virus and your body’s own cells to create an immune response.

But that also creates a downside for mRNA vaccines: they rely on advanced contract manufacturing facilities to create the new types of mRNA that elicit the response needed in our bodies.

There are links in that process that, while making these kinds of vaccines potentially more flexible, could still gum up the works given all the involved players. And especially for developing nations, an easier- and cheaper-to-produce shot like NDV-HXP-S could make a massive difference, especially because it likely wouldn’t require special storage and cooling requirements such countries may not have.

To be clear, the vaccine is in very early stage trials, so we don’t know if it works yet. But the studies involve scientific and academic institutions across the globe and could prove a game-changer, should it prove effective.

Read on for the day’s news, and back to my colleague David Z. Morris tomorrow.

Sy Mukherjee
[email protected]
@the_sy_guy

DIGITAL HEALTH

A high-tech medical solution faces a typical roadblock. In a grand bit of irony not all that rare in the digital health space, MIT Technology Review reports that the ever-hyped medical applications for artificial intelligence are brushing up against... Current medical applications. The report doesn't specifically focus on health care AI, but it's inextricably linked given the analysis of inaccuracies in AI datasets from giants such as Google, and a major datasets such as ImageNet that had a 5.8% error rate in correctly labeling an image. If that's a trend that also occurs in, say, machine learning software meant to examine an odd-looking mole or rash in an age of growing telehealth use, it could be a major problem. (MIT Technology Review)

INDICATIONS

Emergent BioSolutions defends itself after millions of wasted COVID doses. Emergent BioSolutions is having a rough day after 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines were wasted last week at one of its manufacturing sites due to a mixup of biological ingredients. J&J announced Sunday that it would be taking over manufacturing operations at the Baltimore site after the snafu (which, it should be noted, isn't exactly rare in the world of drug making, and especially in an instance when you're trying to ramp up production of a new product this quickly). Emergent on Monday said it will still meet its financial and COVID-19 vaccine production goals, including with the help of an additional $23 million in government funding to specifically tailor manufacturing capacity towards the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. (MarketWatch)

THE BIG PICTURE

'Like a boa constrictor': UnitedHealthcare faces lawsuit alleging pressure tactics. UnitedHealthcare, the health insurance titan, is facing a pair of lawsuits from a group of anesthesiologists in Colorado and Texas alleging that it was forced out of UnitedHealth's networks and that the latter firm actively undermined the group's existing business relationships. The lawsuits were filed by U.S. Anesthesia Partners. But UnitedHealth retorts that this is an effort by the group to boost their own members' payment rates from the insurer, which the company says can be double or even triple standard market rates. (MedCityNews)