Sanofi is working on two possible COVID-19 vaccines (representational)
London:
Britain is nearing a £ 500m ($ 624m) supply agreement with Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline for 60m doses of their potential COVID-19 vaccine, the Sunday Times reported.
The newspaper said Britain was considering taking an option to buy the vaccine if it were to run in human trials, which are due to start in September.
Sanofi was not immediately available to comment on the report, while a spokesperson for GSK declined to comment.
A spokesperson for the UK Department of Business, which is responsible for the UK supply of potential COVID-19 vaccines, said discussions were underway with various parties on access but did not confirm whether the project Sanofi / GSK was one of them.
“The government’s working group on vaccines is actively working with a wide range of companies in the UK and abroad to negotiate access to vaccines,” she said.
“Appropriate announcements of these agreements will be made as the agreements with one of these companies are finalized and signed.”
Sanofi is working on two possible COVID-19 vaccines, one of which uses an adjuvant made by GSK to potentially increase its effectiveness.
Its calendar for clinical trials is at the origin of Moderna Inc, of the University of Oxford in collaboration with AstraZeneca Plc, and of an alliance of BioNTech and Pfizer Inc, whose projects have all made the headlines in moving to human trials as early as March.
Sanofi and GSK have both stated that they favor quality over speed in the development of a vaccine.
(Report by Alistair Smout in London and Caroline Pailliez in Paris; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
