Covid-19 vaccine trials begin in Jiangsu province

Staff Reporter

Human clinical trials of BioNTech and Fosun Pharma’s Covid-19 vaccine have begun in China’s Jiangsu province.
As of August 5, some 72 participants have received a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, BNT162b. The companies are set to enlist 144 healthy subjects of various ages to receive two doses of the vaccine 21 days apart.
If successful, this clinical trial will allow the vaccine to gain regulatory approval by Marketing Authorities and be commercialized in Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
The trial in China will be a follow-up of trials that have taken place in Germany and the United States, to ensure that the effectiveness of the vaccine can be replicated in Chinese participants.
The first vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, has been undergoing trials since July 27 by BioNTech and Pfizer. The pharmaceutical companies have plans to explore clinical trials of other vaccines in China following the success of the RNA technology.
For this collaboration Pfizer, known for their clinical vaccine research, relies on BioNTech’s breakthrough mRNA technology. The partnership will allow the companies to scale up global manufacturing to supply the world with the vaccine.
CEO and Co-founder of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin said that “this is an important step toward our goal to reach marketing authorization and ensure vaccine supply in China to help prevent new Covid-19 outbreaks in the most populous country in the world.”
Ai-Min Hui, President of Global R&D, and Chief Medical Officer of Fosun Pharma said that the partnership with BioNTech will “synchronize the development process in China with other countries, and bring the vaccine to public as soon as possible, if the vaccine succeeds.”