Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate will not be ready in 2021.
“This vaccine won’t be ready this year, but it could be useful at a later stage if the battle against variants continues,” Reuters reported Hudson told the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
The CEO did not give any other details, according to the news outlet.
The Hill contacted the company for comment.
Sanofi has partnered with US-based Translate Bio Last June To develop a vaccine based on mRNA technology. The technology also uses vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna – both of which are approved for emergency use in the United States.
Reuters reported that clinical trials of the company’s vaccine are expected to begin in this quarter, and Sanofi said in December that the “earliest possible approval” for the vaccine was the second half of 2021.
Sanofi Announced in December Provisional results from a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of a separate vaccine being developed with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in the UK showed that the candidate produces a lowered immune response in the elderly. The company said at the time that a low immune response could be due to an insufficient concentration of the antigen.
The company plans to start testing phase 2B of this vaccine this month, a move that will delay its availability sometime in the second half of 2021.
The news comes after Sanofi announced Late January It will help Pfizer and BioNTech produce doses of their vaccine from their facilities in Frankfurt, Germany, starting this summer.
