BREAKING NEWS: Afeyan’s Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Gets FDA’s “Fast Track” Status.

On Tuesday, biopharmaceutical company Moderna announced that the Food and Drug Administration is fast tracking its experimental preventative COVID-19 vaccine through the regulatory process.
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The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company plans to start a phase two trial of the vaccine at the beginning of summer, though they did not announce when the vaccine may be available to consumers.
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Moderna has received $500 million in federal cash to back development of the vaccine, according to Forbes.
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Fast track is a “process designed to facilitate the development, and expedite the review of drugs to treat serious conditions and fill an unmet medical need,” according to the FDA, doing so by increasing frequency of communication with the FDA, which can approve fast-tracked drugs on priority and rolling bases, if needed.
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There is no vaccine or cure for coronavirus, and the vaccine is held up by top experts as the best hope of returning to life pre-COVID-19.
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The phase two trial will test the vaccine on “several hundred” volunteers to assess whether it effectively makes them immune to COVID-19; phase one of testing started in Seattle on March 16, according to USA Today.
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When the genomic makeup of COVID-19 was released by Chinese researchers on January 11, the Moderna team had a vaccine design ready 48 hours later, according to Forbes, and shipped a batch of its first vaccine candidate to the National Institutes of Health 42 days later for a phase one study. Vaccines typically take years to decades to go from design to market. Coronavirus has been an exception”with pharma companies racing alongside governments around the world to develop a vaccine to battle the pandemic.
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The speed of Moderna’s development is due to a new technology, mRNA, per Forbes, which acts by telling “your cells to produce particular proteins.” In theory, this makes vaccine development quicker and safer and more effective at immunization.
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H/T Forbes