Posted by Michael Wonder on 30 Mar 2020
Johnson & Johnson announces a lead vaccine candidate for COVID-19; landmark new partnership with U.S. Department of Health & Human Services; and commitment to supply one billion vaccines worldwide for emergency pandemic use
30 March 2020 - Company Expects to Initiate Phase 1 Human Clinical Studies of Vaccine Candidate at Latest by September 2020.
Johnson & Johnson today announced the selection of a lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate from constructs it has been working on since January 2020; the significant expansion of the existing partnership between the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA); and the rapid scaling of the Company’s manufacturing capacity with the goal of providing global supply of more than one billion doses of a vaccine.
The Company expects to initiate human clinical studies of its lead vaccine candidate at the latest by September 2020 and anticipates the first batches of a COVID-19 vaccine could be available for emergency use authorisation in early 2021, a substantially accelerated timeframe in comparison to the typical vaccine development process.
