Sanofi partners with GSK for developing coronavirus vaccine

Sanofi and GSK have entered an agreement to jointly create a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of next year. 

The companies plan to start clinical trials in the second half of 2020 and make it available by the second half of 2021.

“As the world faces this unprecedented global health crisis, it is clear that no one company can go it alone,” Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said in an announcement Tuesday. “That is why Sanofi is continuing to complement its expertise and resources with our peers, such as GSK, with the goal to create and supply sufficient quantities of vaccines that will help stop this virus.”

The partnership comes as private sector firms form unlikely partnerships as they try to create a vaccine for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 120,000 people around the world as of Tuesday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the coronavirus crisis will end only when an effective vaccine is developed and made widely available.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals pushed out phase 1 of clinical human testing this week, making it the second potential Covid-19 vaccine to undergo human testing. The first human trial for a vaccine started in March, and was developed by Moderna and the federal National Institutes of Health.

Sanofi said it will use its genetics technology and antigen and GSK will contribute its unproven pandemic technology, which theoretically includes the ability to measure dosage and effectiveness. Similar combinations have been well established in other already-available vaccines, the companies stated.