Ministers have today signed a deal with pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur for 60million doses of another potential Covid-19 vaccine.
Number 10 has now signed deals for four different types of coronavirus jabs, giving the UK access to a total of 250million doses — enough to give everyone in Britain four each, if they are all proven to work.
Scientists have yet to trial the vaccine on humans and studies to prove it works won’t begin until September.
Britain last month began shoring up stocks of experimental jabs all over the world in its spread-betting approach in the hope that at least one of them will pay off.
Health chiefs hope the Oxford University vaccine it has agreed to buy — considered one of the front-runners in the scientific race to end the pandemic — will be ready before the end of the year.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the GSK/Sanofi vaccine — rumoured to cost £500million — could be given to high-risk Britons as early as the first half of next year, if trials show it works.
Clinical studies of the new vaccine will begin in September after the deal was signed
The deal has been signed with GlaxoSmithKline (pictured) and Sanofi Pasteur
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: ‘Our scientists and researchers are racing to find a safe and effective vaccine at a speed and scale never seen before.
‘While this progress is truly remarkable, the fact remains that there are no guarantees.
‘In the meantime, it is important that we secure early access to a diverse range of promising vaccine candidates, like GSK and Sanofi, to increase our chances of finding one that works so we can protect the public and save lives.’
A vaccine is the key out of the pandemic which has so far led to the deaths of almost 660,000 people.
It would be the only way to secure protection against catching the coronavirus by triggering an immune response which the body remembers when it is infected with the real virus.
But until a jab is proven to be safe and effective, controlling cases relies on social distancing, regular hand washing and face mask wearing.
Governments globally know this is not a long term solution to the disease because prevention measures and lockdowns have crippled economies.
Scientists are racing to find a vaccine that will protect millions, with 25 already being tested in humans and 140 in pre-clinical trials.
The Government’s deal with GSK/Sanofi allegedly costs £500million, The Sunday Times reported, which will be paid in stages as the vaccine progresses through clinical trials.
Earlier this month, the Government secured a deal of 30million doses from BioNTech, which is working with Pfizer and recently published promising early findings, and 60million of France’s Valneva.
It is not clear exactly how much the Department of Health has paid for the vaccines, but it announced in May a £131million fund to develop vaccine-making facilities.
And it has given Valneva — whose vaccine is understood to be in the preclinical stages of development — an undisclosed amount of money to expand its factory in Livingston, Scotland.
A further agreement has been signed with AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford for their jab, which is in the phase 3 stage, to produce 100million doses for the UK.
The Government is also working with Imperial College London to hasten their developments. It started human trials in June.
Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: ‘Our scientists and researchers are racing to find a safe and effective vaccine at a speed and scale never seen before’
Kate Bingham, chairwoman of the Government’s Vaccines Taskforce, said: ‘This diversity of vaccine types is important because we do not yet know which, if any, of the different types of vaccine will prove to generate a safe and protective response to Covid-19.
‘Whilst this agreement is very good news, we mustn’t be complacent or over-optimistic.
‘The fact remains we may never get a vaccine and, if we do get one, we have to be prepared that it may not be a vaccine which prevents getting the virus, but rather one that reduces symptoms.’
The vaccine produced by GSK and Sanofi, which together have the largest vaccine manufacturing capability in the world, is based on the existing technology used to produce Sanofi’s seasonal flu vaccine.
Genetic material from the surface protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is inserted into insect cells — the basis of Sanofi’s influenza product.
The ‘spike’ protein is what the virus uses to bind with cells in the body to invade them and has become the focus of scientific research.
The vaccines aim to prime the body’s immune system to bind to the protein and disable the virus before it takes hold in the body.
An adjuvant — an ingredient added to enhance the immune response — will be added to the vaccine.
In can reduce the amount of vaccine protein required per dose, which is useful during a pandemic since it may reduce the amount of vaccine protein required per dose, allowing more vaccine doses to be made quickly.
The combination of a protein-based antigen together with an adjuvant is well-established and used in a number of vaccines.
French President Emmanuel Macron, right, visiting a Sanofi Pasteur laboratory last month
Coronavirus has meant people in the UK have to wear masks when going into shops
Kate Bingham, chairwoman of the Government’s Vaccines Taskforce, hailed the deal
Valneva, the French company developing a vaccine that the UK has bought 60m doses, it creating a jab based on injecting people with dead versions of the coronavirus.
This is called an inactivated whole virus vaccine and works by injecting the virus itself but versions that have been damaged in a lab so that they cannot infect human cells. They can be damaged using heat, chemicals or radiation.
Even though the viruses are inactivated the body still recognises them as threats and mounts and immune response against them which can develop immunity.
The BioNTech vaccine, on the other hand, is one which injects RNA – genetic material – which codes the body to produce proteins that look like the spike proteins that would be found on the outside of the real coronavirus.
AstraZeneca, which is working in partnership with Oxford University, is already manufacturing a vaccine in the hope that it will work. The UK Government agreed to buy them without seeing results of clinical trials, which have not been completed yet.
But the team from Oxford, and another working on a different jab made by the American pharmaceutical company Moderna, have both revealed people in their studies are showing signs of immunity.
Each has been working on separate experimental jabs for months to try to protect millions of people from catching the coronavirus in future.
People being given the Oxford vaccine have been developing antibodies and white blood cells called T cells which will help their bodies fight off the virus if they get infected, it is reported.
And experts at Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said participants in their trial – of a different type of vaccine – all successfully developed antibodies.
The vaccines work by tricking the body into thinking it’s infected with Covid-19 and causing it to produce immune substances that have the ability to destroy it.
While early research focused on antibodies, scientists are increasingly turning to a type of immunity called T cell immunity — which is controlled by white blood cells — which has shown signs of promise.
Results of the first wave of trials of the Oxford jab — called AZD1222 — were ‘promising’.
The Government said almost 72,000 people have volunteered in the past week to receive information about joining clinical studies to find a vaccine but many more are needed.
People can sign up for the NHS Covid-19 vaccine research registry, which was not live at 6am this morning.
Ministers hope to get 500,000 people signed up by October.
Roger Connor, president of GSK Vaccines, said: ‘We believe that this adjuvanted vaccine candidate has the potential to play a significant role in overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic, both in the UK and around the world.
‘We thank the UK Government for confirmation of purchasing intent, which supports the significant investment we are already making as a company to scale up development and production of this vaccine.’