Back in December 2019, most of us had never heard of the COVID19 or SARS-CoV2 while the national public radio was quizzing us about it in their trivia shows. COVID19/ Coronavirus/ pandemic is now ubiquitous in our vocabulary. When we look at news these days we see versions of headlines about every new diagnostic test, therapy and vaccine being developed in addition to the horrifying rates of infections and deaths. The webcast on Regulatory Landscapes of COVID-19 Therapeutics, Vaccines, and Diagnostics presented by RA Capital on 15th December 2020 has helped us parse through all those headlines. It also gave us a succinct overview of the developments that have occurred up to date including possible gaps and alternate strategies. It has especially provided clarification on the difference between therapy and prevention as well as the appropriate window for detection of infection.
Some of the important lessons I have learnt from this webcast:
1) Viral particles require a certain period of time to replicate after initial exposure to reach detectable limits. Therefore, testing performed after a quarantine period of 3-5 days will return more accurate results as opposed to right after suspected exposure.
2) Understanding the difference between various therapeutics such as Remdesivir, a polymerase inhibitor versus REGN-CoV2, a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies.
3) Vaccines in development are not created equal and have very different levels of efficacy and the importance of booster doses for lasting effectiveness.
4) Opportunities for combining different types of vaccines and therapies and how collaboration can lead to a more effective vaccination and therapeutic strategy than individual components.
5) Understanding and monitoring antigenic drift to continuously update the SARS-CoV2 vaccine similar to flu vaccines.
6) Possible strategies for development of combination flu-COVID vaccines for future booster dose administrations.
This webcast highlighted the success and failure encountered by humanity in response to a global pandemic and importance of looking at the big picture when working to meet urgent unmet medical needs.
RA capital maps: https://www.racap.com/covid-19
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Archana Gopalan
Research and Quality Specialist
CO, United States
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