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The French Pasteur Institute said on Monday it was halting development of a Covid-19 vaccine with US pharmaceutical company Merck after clinical trial results were disappointing.
The partners announced a partnership last May to develop a vaccine based on an existing measles vaccine, which was stopped in Phase 1 clinical trials in August.
“In these initial human trials, the future vaccine was well tolerated, but produced immune responses lower than those seen in naturally recovered humans seen with the approved vaccines,” said a statement from Pasteur Institute.
The announcement is another blow to hopes for a France-led vaccine after recent news that leading national pharmaceutical company Sanofi is also struggling to market its candidate vaccine.
Sanofi announced in December that its shot would be ready at best by the end of 2021, and the group is now being encouraged by the government to help produce competing vaccines already approved for use in Europe.
These include products from the German-American collaboration BioNTech / Pfizer and the American pharmaceutical group Moderna.
Britain has also authorized the use of a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which is under review by European Union regulatory bodies.
The Pasteur Institute, named after pioneering scientist Louis Pasteur who developed a rabies vaccine in 1885, said it was working on two other Covid-19 vaccines that are not yet ready for clinical trials.
The decision to opt out of the Covid measles shot vaccine “has no impact whatsoever on the continuation of the Pasteur Institute’s investigation of two other vaccine candidates using different methodologies,” it said.
(AFP)