The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Tuesday 20 July that it had begun a rolling review of a new vaccine against Covid-19: Vidprevtyn, developed by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur.
“It is a protein-based vaccine that contains a laboratory-grown version of the spike protein found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2”, the EMA said.
Once the vaccine has been administered, the immune system of the vaccinated person should identify the spike protein as foreign, produce antibodies to fight it, and then be able to defend the body against SARS-CoV-2 if it comes into contact with the virus.
Encouraging preliminary results from laboratory and early clinical studies in adults have prompted the EMA to initiate its rolling review.
The Agency will examine more data as it becomes available and will continue its analysis until sufficient evidence has been gathered to request marketing authorisation for the product. It is impossible, the EMA reminds us, to “predict the overall timelines” of the evaluation.
Four other Covid-19 vaccines are still under rolling review. This has been the case since February for the vaccines developed by CureVac and Novavax, since March for the Russian vaccine Sputnik V and since May for the candidate vaccine from the Chinese company Sinovac. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)