Collaboration with AstraZeneca a ‘great example’

LONDON – Collaboration between vaccine makers will increase in 2021, according to the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who welcomes the recent announcement of a combined process for the two candidates, being developed by Russia and the UK.

“I think next year will be the era of vaccine collaboration rather than vaccine competition,” said Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which supports the country’s Covid vaccine, dubbed “Sputnik V”. .

Last Friday, British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said it would soon partner with Russia’s Gamaleya Institute to investigate whether their two injections could be successfully combined.

RDIF said clinical trials of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in combination with the vaccine would begin by the end of December. Dmitriev told CNBC on Thursday that the agreement was a “great example of vaccine partnership.”

“I think the world should focus on partnership rather than competition because we need all the vaccines to be successful.”

“We believe that all the vaccines out there are great and will have great results,” he added.

AstraZeneca (whose vaccine was found to have an average efficacy of 70.4%, based on pooling two dosing regimens in late-stage clinical trials), for its part, said in a statement that useful to improve protection and / or accessibility of vaccines. Therefore, it is important to investigate different vaccine combinations to make immunization programs more flexible. “

Russia said earlier this week that data from the third and final checkpoint in the late clinical trial of its vaccine showed that its candidate has a 91.4% efficacy rate in preventing Covid infection.

Dmitriev said the collaboration with AstraZeneca could help “improve the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine.”

He believed that other vaccine manufacturers would also work together to check for “the interoperability of different vaccines.”

There has been international skepticism about the Russian vaccine, given that regulators in the country approved it (in August) before late-stage clinical trials had even begun.

Data from clinical studies have also yet to be released. On Monday, Russian vaccine makers said research data from pilot studies “will be published by the Gamaleya Center team in one of the leading international peer-reviewed medical journals,” but did not say when this could happen.

Russia has repeatedly said that criticism of its vaccine is due to “information warfare” and Russophobia. Last week, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense said there had been a “smear campaign” against the Russian vaccine, TASS news agency reported.

The partnership with AstraZeneca is all the more interesting given that the UK, US and Canada accused Russia of supporting hackers attempting to steal research into coronavirus vaccines. Russia has vigorously denied the hacking claims.

– CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.