Congratulations on getting the funding
um what did you make of dr fauci's uh
comments well we
we are in the business of r d and we
learn from experiments and so we will do
the experiments to find out how many
doses are needed
to have long-term protection our
we're we're in a clinical trial right
now where we're dosing uh people with
one dose and then uh
followed up by another boosting dose and
we'll measure the
the uh ability to protect long term
that's all you can do
look at your data
it stan is an antibody response enough
and is there a kind of
a line in the sand that you're getting
an idea of
in terms of that antibody response in
terms of providing protection
yeah so that's a great question so are
we we have taken the
tactic of having a vaccine that has
tactic of having a vaccine that has
a recombinant protein that we make at
large scale
and that protein itself has the ability
to stimulate
antibody responses that should be
protective
but we also mix it with an adjuvant
and the purpose of the adjuvant is to
boost that immune response to the
antigen
and to boost a t cell response so cell
mate mediated immunity so our vaccine
has
both and we think both components are
important
do you think that a world where we get
like a one shot and done thing
like measles is actually realistic and
can you give me perspective on kind of
timing then for sort of multi shot
versus
one shot deal yeah i
i think the data are looking so far that
they would have uh
in our trials we're trying out one dose
of day day zero
and we're following that up with the
104
00:01:48,870 --> 00:01:48,880
and we're following that up with the
dose of day 21. i think
that for our vaccine it could be a
standard dose others are taking
approaches where they're trying just one
dose and there's
there are several different main
approaches to a vaccine we're all
targeting interestingly
we're all targeting the same protein
it's called a spike protein
and it's a protein on the surface of the
virus that has to bind to your
human respiratory cells and if you make
antibodies to that spike protein
then you block it from being able to get
into your respiratory
cells and cause cause illness and there
are the
there are several different ways there
are three main ways that we're making
this
uh protein uh one where it's inside of a
of a viral vector that's that's uh
been killed so it doesn't infect you
another one is to make mrna that encodes
the same spike protein and ours is is i
guess
the more proven traditional way it
sounds old but it's not
but it's it's to actually make the
but it's it's to actually make the
protein itself it forms a nanoparticle
which is
which is really immunogenic and is seen
by the immune system as
something they want to put antibodies on
it so so those three different ways of
making that protein could result
in three different immune responses some
in three different immune responses some
more potent
some less and and the data will
the data will show us and not very long
we're all
racing as fast as we possibly can we're
in phase one trials were
get data by the end of this month and
those phase one trials should turn into
phase two trials in august
and by sometime in the fall we should
have some evidence because we're going
to do this in multiple countries
we should have some evidence that our
we should have some evidence that our
vaccine is
stimulating a an immune response that
protects
it is safe
dr fanchi also talked the other day
about the fact that we are starting to
see
mutations in the virus um
would that affect the spike that you're
talking about
if that were to mutate how problematic
would that be for your efforts
we've looked at it and so far we're in
the clear
so and that's what you that's why you
want to have a vaccine like ours
which which has a full length protein
stimulates antibodies to many parts of
the protein
and has an adjuvant that that broadens
the response so
so so far we're okay
um there's a lot of vaccine under
development out there obviously for many
different companies
um how is it to get test patients to try
the vaccine
i mean is it easy do you have to compete
with other companies what do you do with
that
well it's a question that's increasingly
asked because it's not hard to do phase
one study i mean
we had 130 people and we had them in one
we had 130 people and we had them in one
day
um it's it's uh as you get into trials
with 30 000 people
we can do that as well there's lots of
people who would love to have an
experimental coronavirus vaccine
if you get into trials with three or
four trials with 30 000 people
four trials with 30 000 people
you might bump into one another and so
that has to be worked out
there's certainly plenty of trial
science there's certainly no shortage of
people who would love to try a
coronavirus vaccine so
that that can be sorted out
um how's it going to work in different
regions around the world stan
um you are now part of of the warp speed
program in the united states
does the u.s get it first can you
manufacture only in the united states
does that pose
risks do you need to have multiple nodes
uh in terms of your manufacturing
process
and again therefore and then does that
lead you on in terms of problems of
distribution
no i'm glad you asked the question
because we've we've addressed that
problem early
we have uh we've invested in global
production
we've been aided by this group sepi
which is the coalition for
epidemic preparedness who has given us a
funding of 380 million dollars
we've just bought a facility in the
czech republic
that has the capability of making a
billion doses of product
we're now turning on
plants in another country in europe and
in asia and in india so we're going to
have a global
manufacturing capacity both for our
antigen the spike protein
and for matrix which is the adjuvant
that's important
and the and the goal is that
if borders close in one area or another
uh we will still be a global producer so
i i think that's a strategy that's
really important to the pandemic
but you are a u.s company and you did
get 1.6 billion dollars from
the us so were there any strings
attached like you have to distribute it
here first
well it it part of the part of our
obligation are to make
to get these plants up and running and
to make 100 million doses
that can be deliverable starting in the
fourth quarter hopefully
finished by january or february of next
year and
so those will be for the u.s beyond that
is not
been determined but there's clearly
going to have to be more procurement by
the u.s government
and hopefully we can have capacity to
supply the entire u.s population
and and perhaps others so that we can
ship outside the united states
and and as i say we're backed up by
capacity in asia and europe and india
so uh we'll be able to ship anywhere
