Post by account_disabled on Feb 20, 2024 5:51:26 GMT -5
Phase three is crucial because it is able to show how a vaccine affects the majority of a population. Peter Hotez: As long as there is this commitment to not put pressure on clinical trials when they are in phase three, I think everything should go well. Narrator : Officially, Operation Warp Speed does not involve skipping any steps, but rather shortening their duration while funding multiple simultaneous trials. And the mystery of Operation Warp Speed surrounds the way it is financed. About $12 billion has already been committed to six vaccine candidates, including drugstore brands such as Johnson and Johnson , Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The recent Insider media reported that government scientists narrowed down a list of nearly 100 vaccines to just 10. But the White House has not published a complete list of the companies that have received funding or what the criteria are for choosing one or the other.
. Moderna, a lesser-known company before entering the race for the vaccine, has raised about $2.5 billion in two rounds of investment. The startup is the first Warp Speed finalist, which reaches Middle East Phone Number List phase three of the trials. Its technology platform has never successfully brought any drug to market. And in case you missed it, the company leading the vaccine race has never created a drug that was created by the FDA. That's not unusual for a biotech startup, and the federal government supported Moderna's platform even before the pandemic. But the company has another potential advantage: it's its connection to the head of Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui.
Andrew Dunn : Moncef Slaoui comes after having been on the board of directors of Moderna, and his work as a contractor is key to the operation. This has sown skepticism among some people given his ties to the industry and the possibility that he has conflicts of interest. Narrator : Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive and venture capitalist, resigned from Moderna's board, even as its stock prices tripled since January. Moncef Slaoui : It has been extremely painful for me that someone thinks that I accepted this job to enrich myself or to favor my former colleagues. Narrator : And Slaoui has another very close relationship with another Operation Warp Speed company: his former company GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK . In July GSK received a $2.1 billion grant, the largest single investment under the program to date. As of May, Slaoui owned more than $10 million in company stock.