- Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine was going to be a shot for the world.
- Those kinds of moments took on a different colour, though, as the one-dose form of the J&J vaccine turned out to have only 66% efficacy at preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with the vaccines developed by Moderna and the team of Pfizer and BioNTech, which showed efficacy in the range of 95%.
- Running the right trials is just too difficult.
The Covid vaccine, developed by Johnson & Johnson, was supposed to provide a shot for the entire world. Now, weighed down by a mass of negative publicity, one wonders if the world will want it as reported by Stat.
Disappointment to researchers
A panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unanimously agreed on Thursday that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines should be recommended over the J&J vaccine.
That won’t matter much to J&J’s bottom line, as the vaccine accounted for only $500 million of the company’s $23 billion in revenue in the third quarter.
However, the recommendation is perplexing to the general public, a slap in the face to one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and a disappointment to researchers inside and outside J&J who hoped that the shot and the technology behind it would make a significant difference in the fight against a raging global pandemic.
J&J’s decisions, which appeared to be made in the interest of public health rather than profit, may have harmed the vaccine’s chances, and in the end, the business was defeated by one of the core principles of drug development: biology is unfair, and you can’t fight poor luck.
Crowning achievement
The J&J Covid vaccine for a moment seemed like a crowning achievement for Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer and vice-chairman, known for his career developing HIV and tuberculosis drugs as well as an Ebola vaccine.
On the Covid vaccine, he was working with Harvard’s Dan Barouch, who was also working with J&J on an HIV vaccine.
Last January, Stoffels described to me the moment he knew that the vaccine might have legs.
The scientists were extremely happy but remained subdued — they joked it was because they are both Flemish.
But Stoffels saved the photo on his phone.
J&J vaccine
Those kinds of moments took on a different colour, though, as the one-dose form of the J&J vaccine turned out to have only 66% efficacy at preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with the vaccines developed by Moderna and the team of Pfizer and BioNTech, which showed efficacy in the range of 95%.
Both of those competing vaccines use a technology called mRNA to prompt the body to make a protein from the virus that the immune system then learns to recognize; J&J’s vaccine instead uses a modified version of a virus, called adenovirus.
Any pharma marketer will tell you: Even a slight difference in efficacy numbers can sway patients and doctors.
When it was finally introduced, there were distribution problems that limited supply.
The vaccine’s popularity never recovered.
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Source: Stat
