Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said a COVID-19 vaccine candidate the company is developing will not be ready by 2021.
“This vaccine will not be ready this year, but it could be all the more useful at a later stage if the fight against variants continues” Reuters reported Hudson told the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
The CEO did not provide other details, the news report said.
The Hill has contacted the company for comment.
Sanofi partnered with the US-based company Translate Bio last June to develop the vaccine based on mRNA technology. Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – both of which are approved for emergency use in the US – also use this technology.
Reuters reported that clinical trials of the company’s vaccine were expected to begin this quarter, and Sanofi said in December that the “earliest possible approval” of the vaccine was in the second half of 2021.
Sanofi announced in December that the interim results of a phase 1/2 clinical study of a separate vaccine developing with the UK’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) show that the candidate produced a low immune response in older adults. The company said at the time that the low immune response could be due to an insufficient concentration of the antigen.
The company plans to start a Phase 2b trial of this vaccine this month, a move that will delay its availability until sometime in the second half of 2021.
The news comes after Sanofi announced the end of January that it will help Pfizer and BioNTech produce doses of their vaccine from their facilities in Frankfurt, Germany starting this summer.