Want to know how we’re doing on the Covid-19 vaccine front, but haven’t seen an easy to read chart? The first 3 Covid-19 vaccines compared

The development and distribution of a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine is the most important human endeavor of our current moment. How are we doing? What does the early data say? When will doses be available and to whom? We have 3 main contenders that have released Phase 1 data: Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca. I excluded CanSino because of disappointing early results.These will likely be the first vaccines to market, so I compared their current safety, efficacy and supply profiles.

An important note: Due to a lack of global coordination on trial design and endpoint selection, these vaccines are being tested in different ways. It is irresponsible to compare studies like I’ve done below for a lot of reasons. However, we don’t really have another choice.

Notes on T cells (they’re crazy complicated):

CD4+ Th1: create inflammatory response against virus (cytokines)
CD4+ Th2: aid the differentiation and antibody production by B cells (helper T cells)
CD8+: destroy viral infected cells (killer T cells)

This is surprisingly strong initial data, which shows how far vaccine platforms have come in the last 10 years. Plus, it appears we’ll have multiple viable vaccines and that redundancy gives me a lot of hope that we’ll be able to start controlling Covid in Q1 2021 using widespread vaccination.

Thanks for reading! We can accelerate vaccine development using a trial design called a human challenge trial, I’ve made it easy for you to ask your elected representatives to make this possible here.

Here’s the live link that I’ll keep updated as new data is released.

Update: Disclaimers and comments from drug discovery chemist and blogger Derek Lowe:

“Everything I see in your table looks good, but the biggest gap is efficacy. We have the antibody and (some) of the T-cell data, but what we don’t know is how that matches up with real-world coronavirus protection. I’m holding off until we see some Phase II data, because I just have no idea how things will come out – in my experience, a lot of schemes that looks rational break down a bit in actual patients with the disease, and that makes me wary (!) But that said, I think you’re doing all that can be done with the data available!”

Another important note: I’m not an immunologist or a statistician and ask folks to correct things I’ve undoubtedly gotten wrong.

Disclaimer: I consult in a limited capacity for AstraZeneca on matters completely unrelated to their vaccine program. I have no financial interests in any individual company.

Sources:

Many thanks to Derek Lowe for all of his analysis of these vaccines