Does anybody know the historical success rates of vaccine clinical trials? Starting to read reports of the various vaccines making their way to the trial stage but curious at the end of previous vaccine trials how many actually end up being successful?

I'm not asking about the time to market. I'm curious about historical success rates of previous vaccine trials.

Beat the Hell said:

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Want to put cash on that?

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No but the docs said yesterday the vaccines that started yesterday will be a few more months of injections and then a year waiting period for observation.

I think there is only one trial going on at the moment and at this point they are only testing its impact on healthy people to determine an adverse reactions. Could be wrong, but we are a ways away from knowing the impact of a vaccine on the virus itself in clinical trials.

Alta said:

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Does anybody know the success rates of vaccine clinical trials? Starting to read reports of the various vaccines making their way to the trial stage but curious as the end of trial how many actually ever being successful?

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Misread your post initially. Would be interesting. I think the likelihood of the first vaccine trial working is probably unrealistic, but possible. Which is why I think its good that there will be many trials starting across the world.

TAMUallen said:

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If we are lucky enough to find a vaccine that is successful, quickly, my bets are on it being mass produced much quicker than anticipated. All resources possible, private and government, would go into getting it out. There's no greater threat right now to both life and quality of life for every American citizen so we will find a way

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Agreed, people mention the three facilities combined in the U.S. that can produce 50 million vaccines in 4 months. I think you will see many more facilities beginning to produce it as well. I believe the trial portion of the vaccine process that will take the most time as do most.

I think the slowest part of the whole process will be waiting to see if the initial human subjects have any adverse reactions. I wonder how much they can shorten this period. Do they say "Okay, no one showed any problems after a year, good to go"? Or do they try to cut that time period? Not sure how wise it would be to mass produce and administer a biological product that has only been studied out to 3 or 6 months.

We also must consider what the immune response will be like once those individuals are challenged with virus. Of course you want to be sure that the vaccine is actually protective, but also that the bodies response to the viral challenge will not make symptoms/disease worse. You don't want to prime a population that will only need increased medical care now.

Beat the Hell said:

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Want to put cash on that?

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I've heard minimum of 18 months so far.
Obviously they could fast track it, but there has to be some testing to ensure the cure is not worst than the disease, and that takes time.

Any expert I've heard says we are over a year away. One said closer to 2 years.

Every non-expert insists that we can get a vaccine much, much faster.

I don't think testing can be rushed since we HAVE to wait X amount of time to see what the side effects are. That part can't be rushed.

Brave souls getting injected knowing animal trials are being skipped.

The whole timeline of this vaccine business seems extremely fishy. The recent coronaviruses (SARS and MERS) happened a while ago and there is still no vaccine available for those. But all the sudden in a matter of weeks someone came up with a coronavirus vaccine for this strain and animal trials are being skipped?!

Just seems off.

10andBOUNCE said:

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Brave souls getting injected knowing animal trials are being skipped.

The whole timeline of this vaccine business seems extremely fishy. The recent coronaviruses (SARS and MERS) happened a while ago and there is still no vaccine available for those. But all the sudden in a matter of weeks someone came up with a coronavirus vaccine for this strain and animal trials are being skipped?!

Just seems off.

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I believe a SARS vaccine was ready to go into animal/human trials at the time, but the virus died out and there was no longer a commercial reason to move forward with those expensive trials.

Researchers today can piggy-back on the work done previously (not to mention the huge advancements in science/technology over the last 15+ years). Couple all of that with the govt stepping in and cutting a whole crapload of red tape in order to speed this into reality and the timing isn't off at all.......

All that being said, it may be years before we learn what, if any, unintended consequences we are opening ourselves up for by cutting that red tape.

TAMUallen said:

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If we are lucky enough to find a vaccine that is successful, quickly, my bets are on it being mass produced much quicker than anticipated. All resources possible, private and government, would go into getting it out. There's no greater threat right now to both life and quality of life for every American citizen so we will find a way

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as someone who owns an RNA startup, I would tell you ramping up production of Moderna's vaccine will be difficult, but not impossible. My guess is they will collaborate with Curevac, Aldevrobn, Trilink, BioNtech and others to use their facilities here and abroad to manufacture and ramp up production. The costs of manufacturing mRNA are extraordinary, but i'd be interested to know the dose they're using.

I am going to try my question again. The question relates to previous vaccines that have been developed and gone to market. Once testing vaccines begins on humans what is the historical success/failure rate on developing those vaccines to commercial production. Is there data on this information? I'm not interested on whether the vaccine would be available in 6 months, one year, two years, etc. I'm just trying to understand the historical success/failure rate of vaccines in clinical trial stage.

Alta said:

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I am going to try my question again. The question relates to previous vaccines that have been developed and gone to market. Once testing vaccines begins on humans what is the historical success/failure rate on developing those vaccines to commercial production. Is there data on this information? I'm not interested on whether the vaccine would be available in 6 months, one year, two years, etc. I'm just trying to understand the historical success/failure rate of vaccines in clinical trial stage.

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I don't have any data, but I would venture that historical success rates in developing new viral vaccines is extremely low. I would also guess that modern technology significantly raises your success rate, pending unknown adverse affects in trials.....

Thanks!

I would add to the success / failure rate question related to vaccination development in novel virus strains and also corona virus strains:

What is the complication rate of vaccines in novel viruses?

What is the mortality rate?

What is the serious adverse event rate?

Given those numbers and extrapolation to larger populations, what are considered risks and benefits of accelerated trial phase implementation?

I'm really driving at the pros and cons of implementing more wide scale study (gen population) prior to an anticipated resurgence in fall.