The sprint to find medical breakthroughs to contain Covid-19 stumbled this week, as a pair of pharmaceutical giants working to develop treatments and vaccines suffered setbacks in the clinic. On Tuesday, Eli Lilly & Co. said that enrollment in a government-sponsored clinical trial of its antibody therapy had been paused out of safety concerns. That came less than 24 hours after Johnson & Johnson said research on its experimental vaccine was paused after a study volunteer fell ill.
However, the trial complications are happening in an environment of intense scrutiny, executives and industry observers said, and the highly public nature of the hunt for vaccines and treatments is magnifying events that in other studies would be considered routine.
The need to find viable treatments and ways to arrest the spread of the virus is becoming more pressing. Cases are climbing again in the U.S. and Europe ahead of what public-health officials have warned could become a dangerous winter with Covid-19 circulating unchecked alongside seasonal influenza. More virulent outbreaks could spur the need for more economically damaging infection-control measures.
High Stakes
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate.
Source: Johnson & Johnson
J&J Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk said in an interview the company doesn’t know whether the person who was sickened had received the vaccine or a placebo. He said that J&J is sticking to its development timeline and plans to be able to produce 1 billion doses a year.
“Everybody is anxious to get a vaccine to the pandemic, for the right reasons,” Wolk said, “but nobody is cutting corners or suggesting that there be undue pressure to make that happen.”
The stakes in a vaccine trial are especially high, since inoculations are given to people of all ages, many of whom are otherwise healthy. Poland, of the Mayo Clinic, said he had never seen a vaccine trial under as much scrutiny as the Covid-19 trials.
“No one wants to misstep here,” he said. “The decisions we are making will affect our children, our parents, our families. We aren’t making decisions in a void.”