Corona: This is the state of the art in vaccine development

People worldwide are researching the development of a vaccine against the new coronavirus. Germany and the BMBF are also involved. The first tests are now pending. But patience is required: a vaccine must be effective and safe.

The Corona epidemic presents people in Germany and worldwide with an unprecedented challenge. Nevertheless, the BMBF is convinced that this challenge can be mastered. Society can rely on research - worldwide and in Germany. Researchers work under high pressure.

On the one hand, it's about the development of new drugs. And this includes drugs that are already used for other clinical pictures or were close to being used. It's also about developing a vaccine. This is of course the best way to fight back the virus. But: Developing a vaccine is very time consuming.

According to the WHO, more than 130 vaccine developments against the corona virus have started worldwide. This list of institutes and companies also includes the German companies BioNTech and CureVac as well as the German Center for Infection Research together with the company IDT.

The good thing is that in the case of Corona, the researchers don't start from scratch. They already know other corona viruses such as MERS and SARS. That's why there was a diagnostic test relatively quickly. That is invaluable.

Vaccine research is particularly driven by the international vaccine alliance CEPI. So the world has learned from the Ebola epidemic. Germany recently increased its contribution by 140 million euros this year and intends to make another 90 million euros available in the coming year. The Federal Ministry of Research has informed about these activities. CureVac is one of the nine institutes worldwide that are currently commissioned by CEPI.

The international measures are supplemented by the national commitment of the Federal Ministry of Research in vaccine research. The BMBF has launched a special program with a volume of up to 750 million euros to strengthen and accelerate the development of vaccines. The aim is to enable upcoming vaccine studies with a larger number of subjects and to expand production capacities. This is to ensure that many people in Germany are vaccinated as part of the clinical studies at an early stage and that production in Germany and worldwide can start quickly and on a large scale as soon as a vaccine is found.

The framework conditions for the development of a vaccine are therefore very good. And yet, today nobody can predict exactly when a vaccine will be available to large sections of the population. So unfortunately we need patience. But we can hope that a vaccine will be found.

A vaccine has to be effective - that is, to actually protect against the disease. And it has to be safe - that means it must not cause any damage to health. Therefore, a vaccine must be tested sufficiently.

BioNTech has already started clinical trials in humans and CureVac is also planning to test the first vaccine candidates soon. This is the beginning of a longer test phase that spans several stages. It is very difficult to predict how this test phase will develop. You have to be very careful with forecasts.

It is clear that the faster the vaccine is available to the entire population, the better.