Opinion | Tale of two vaccines: AstraZeneca’s road to success offers lessons for Hong Kong’s biotech ambitions
- An HKU team was one of the first to come up with a potential vaccine, but its bumpy development process makes one thing clear: Hong Kong has the talent but not the ecosystem to bring biotechnological breakthroughs to market
Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, vaccine development is a race against time in which we all have a stake.
As reported recently, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, in particular, has probably saved more lives than any other, with nearly 2.5 billion doses administered, more than any other vaccine, two-thirds of which have gone to low- and lower-middle-income countries.
First approved for use by British regulators in December 2020, the vaccine was developed in less than a year. As the unsung heroes behind the vaccine said, strong execution and concurrent administration of vaccine development procedures were key levers.
On prototyping the vaccine, animal tests in mice and non-human primates were conducted concurrently. Meanwhile, Phase I trials had already been planned and manufacturing for the pilot batches of vaccines for human trials was under way during preclinical studies.