We Can Thank COVID-19 for Speeding up Vaccine Creation

The world was shocked by the speed of COVID-19 vaccination development and approval—so much so that some didn’t believe they were safe. The public health campaigns to encourage vaccination had to address why they were safe and how testing occurred so quickly.

Given that vaccines can take 10-15 years—from lab development to animal testing, to phased trials, to approval and licensure—getting a COVID vaccine into the public’s arms in less than one year is a modern miracle. Prior to this speedy innovation, the fastest vaccine previously developed, mumps vaccine, took about 4 years in the 1960s.

Many things had to go right for the COVID vaccine to succeed. However, the pharmaceutical industry is taking lessons learned to improve and accelerate the vaccine-making process overall so that other diseases can be addressed more quickly going forward.

Let’s take a deeper dive into what made the COVID vaccine’s trajectory so quick, before looking at how it benefits other vaccines.

How the puzzle came together

Never in the world’s history have scientists, manufacturers, and nations come together with such purpose and dedication as they did with this project. Here’s why it worked.

• Cooperation: Globally, stakeholders such as academics, pharma companies and different countries worked together and shared information to hasten the process. Multiple funding sources also stepped up to ensure that finances and risk aversion were not an issue, including governments and outside funders like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). 
• Overlapping stages: Vaccine development is traditionally a step-by-step process, with steps not overlapping. It’s expensive to develop any pharmaceutical product, and the manufacturer typically takes the risk and foots the bill. To derisk the process, individual trial phases do not overlap, and manufacturing waits until approval. With COVID vaccine trials, companies could run multiple trial phases concurrently by either assuming more risk (notably Pfizer) or through government funding. Commercial manufacturing began before full trial results were known.
• Risk and funding: Much of the research and manufacturing was government-funded, with governments providing buying commitments. The manufacturers knew they would not lose money on this process. This allowed them to move forward at breakneck speed while also developing and testing more candidates, rather than devoting resources only to the most promising ones. Notably, the fastest and arguably most successful development was by Pfizer, which did not receive any public government funding for the development of its COVID vaccine, but it had the scale and determination to run ahead at breakneck speed. If there ever was an example of Pharma for Good, this is it.
• Plug and play: While most of the world saw the mRNA platform as an approach appearing out of nowhere, this overnight success took 15 years. The platform was waiting for the right use case. Most vaccines use inactivated or weakened viruses or create a lab-developed artificial protein for each targeted virus or bacterium. The mRNA platform just required the virus’s genetic sequence to insert, so the cells could make spike proteins to activate the immune system’s antibody production against the coronavirus.
• Manufacturing: The proteins and viral fragments used in other vaccine types can take longer to produce than mRNA molecules. These other vaccines often use eggs or yeast as a growth medium, but the mRNA molecules are chemically synthesized, making the process easier to scale.

Faster future vaccine development

Getting a vaccine into the market in less than a year was inspirational and life-saving, no doubt about it. The process brought a spotlight and energized the vaccine discovery process, with candidates increasing by 30% in the last 5 years, with McKinsey attributing that to the pandemic response. The COVID-19 vaccine had a multimodal army behind it, with funding, multi-stakeholder cooperation, scientific attention, data sharing, regulatory speed, and manufacturing dedication. Plus, the business case for this vaccine was so strong that each party involved gave it unprecedented attention for it to succeed.

Vaccine development times overall have shortened in recent years, thanks to the pandemic. McKinsey found several vaccines that began development in 2021, with potential or anticipated approval dates 30 to 40 months (2.5 to 3.3 years) after their development began. Two of those use the mRNA platform (RSV and influenza from Moderna) and two do not (influenza from Pfizer and pneumococcal from Vaxcyte). Still others, malaria, RSV, and pneumococcal vaccines, are anticipating approval 50 to 58 months (4.2 to 4.8 years) from their initial development efforts.

The pandemic also moved vaccine development along by funding research into multiple technologies, such as protein nanoparticle-based vaccines. Not every vaccine is a good fit for the mRNA platform, so finding new and faster ways to manufacture and deliver vaccines is essential to addressing public health issues.

Aside from a potential future pandemic, subsequent vaccines will not have that combination of money and stakeholder focus, which means creating a vaccine in less than 12 months isn’t likely. But it can—and sometimes will—be faster than before. There’s already a time savings seen with reduced gaps between clinical trial phases.

People can benefit from vaccines for various illnesses and the recent attention should especially help make the development and testing process easier and for vaccines needed in underdeveloped areas. CEPI and other organizations are working to derisk the process for developers and manufacturers. Industry has often partnered with academia, but the collaborations for the COVID vaccine extended far beyond and are likely to continue.  

The world is in a better place with pandemic preparedness given the knowledge gained from our COVID vaccine experience. The same level of attention won’t be provided for all vaccine needs, but we can apply the lessons, from research to public health campaigns, to advance global health moving forward.