A vaccine in 18 months to 2 years against the coronavirus. This is the ambitious bet in which Professor Michel Kazatchkine, a clinical immunologist and former Director of the French National Agency for AIDS Research, wants to believe. Guest of It happened tomorrow, Sunday on Europe 1, he explained believing in the achievement of such a goal through medical research. "I am quite confident that the international community will be able to manufacture this vaccine," he said.
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"What makes me confident is that we know that people who recover from coronavirus infection do so because they make antibodies that block the virus, antibodies that we call neutralizers, as is the cases of influenza, measles and many diseases ", explains the former director of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (2007 to 2012).
"What we know is what we need to make a vaccine: we need to mimic what the virus does and to induce these antibodies. Whereas, for example in the case of AIDS, nobody "was able to spontaneously recover from the disease, that is, to completely eliminate the virus and this is one of the difficulties in developing a vaccine for this disease."
"Here, we know what to do and we have a history," he adds, recalling that a vaccine has been developed against the SARS 200, even if the latter "arrived a little late when the epidemic was already over. " "But we are dealing with two viruses that are cousins. And our international and colossal research," he concludes.
The time needed to "perfect a product, develop it and test it"
"We are in a gigantic global crisis. There are already ten candidate vaccines looming, there are two or three that are already in clinical trials, called tolerance trials, and if I say 18 months to two years it's not so much because you have to imagine and conceptualize vaccine models, but it's the time necessary to develop a product, develop it and do the tests that will prove its effectiveness so here about the time, "further details the clinical immunologist.
According to him, it is only when we come out of confinement, thus signifying that the virus will have decreased its speed of circulation, that "we will be able to set up detection strategies on the one hand for positive people and their confinement and on the other hand the detection of protected people who have antibodies which will allow these people to fully resume their activity, their freedom of movement and their productivity if they work. "
Even when you ignore "the absolute proof of the effectiveness of a vaccine"
Regarding the production of the vaccine, according to Pr Michel Kazatchkine, the authorities will have to show anticipation. "If we had to wait or if we had to wait until there was proof of efficiency to start manufacturing, we would add delays to delays," he analyzes before continuing: "Presumably, he will we will have to start manufacturing even though we don't know if we have absolute proof of the effectiveness of a vaccine. In other words, we will have to make very significant investments with risks (...) ".
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A global public good that everyone should be able to access "
As for the price, the specialist recommends drawing on lessons learned from the era of AIDS during which "international financing mechanisms have been set up and have made it possible to bring prices down considerably". "Remember at the beginning, AIDS treatment cost 10,000 euros per year per patient. It now costs 100 euros per patient per year," he recalls, calling for "multilateral discussions by the entire international community." ".
The objective: "That intellectual property rights be ceded and that we consider this vaccine as what we call a global public good to which everyone should be able to access wherever they live and whatever their income". "The pooling of scientific knowledge, I think it will happen. It will take some sort of pooling and brackets of patents and it will take a global fund to finance the purchase and distribution of these vaccines, he concludes.