How soon will we have a coronavirus vaccine? The race against covid-19 – New Scientist

The hope is that we will have a coronavirus vaccine in 12-18 months, but for that to happen we may have to rely on untested techniques - and that comes with its own risks.

By Carrie Arnold

POTTERING around her kitchen on the morning of 31 December, Kate Broderick scrolled through the headlines while shewaited for her tea to brew. One story caught her eye: a mysterious outbreak of severe pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Nearly overnight, the number of cases seemed to explode. Iknew we didnt have time to wait, she says.

A molecular geneticist at Inovio Pharmaceuticals in California, Broderick was poised for what came next. When Chinese officials published the genetic sequence of thenew SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causing the illness just two weeks after the first cases were reported to the World Health Organization, Broderick got to work. Within 3hours, her teamhad a prototype vaccine ready for initial testing. It was an unprecedented turnaround, but a moment Broderick and many others hadlong seen coming.

Making vaccines usually takes a decade or more between development, safety testing andmanufacturing, says Seth Berkley, head ofGavi, an international group that promotes vaccine use around the world. With global confirmed cases of the new disease, covid-19, surging past 180,000 at the time of writing, time is of the essence.

To speed things up, scientists are turning tountested classes of vaccines, and rethinking every part of how they are designed, evaluated and manufactured. If the approach works, we will, for the first time, have identified a new disease and developed a vaccine against it while the initial outbreak is still ongoing.But speed can come with downsides. Wecould have a vaccine in three weeks, butwecant guarantee its safety or efficacy, saysGaryKobinger, a virologist at LavalUniversity in Canada.

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How soon will we have a coronavirus vaccine? The race against covid-19 - New Scientist