European authorities seek to accelerate testing of coronavirus vaccines containing genetically modified organisms, two European Union sources told Reuters.
The European Commission is expected to present the plans from next week. The measure is part of a broader EU strategy aimed at ensuring sufficient doses of a possible vaccine for the block, as it fears lagging behind the US and China.
The reform is expected to reduce the power of member states to impose additional requirements on pharmaceutical companies when conducting clinical testing of drugs and vaccines containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), according to sources.
In some countries such as Italy and France, for example, treatments must be authorized by government departments of environment and research, as well as health and drug authorities, according to standards up to 20 years old and also covering the most sensitive area of modified crops.
This has caused bottlenecks in a pharmaceutical industry that is increasingly dependent on genetic engineering.
Delays could be particularly problematic now that Europe needs to accelerate testing, a European Commission official said, warning that some of the most promising COvid-19 injections being developed contain GMOs.
Vaccines Europe, which represents many major pharmaceutical players, including AstraZeneca, Sanofi, Pfizer, GSK and Novavax, said planned changes would create an even playing field between vaccines containing GMOs and those that do not contain them.
“GMOs are very specific to very few adenovirus vector-based vaccines,” Michel Stoffel of Vaccines Europe told Reuters, citing those developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson among those containing GMOs and benefiting from possible changes.
Vaccines developed by Chinese firm Cansino and US giant Merck also contain vectors of adenovirus, which cause the common cold, and other viruses that replicate. It aims to introduce a gene of the new coronavirus into the bodies, to provoke an immune response and protect it from further exposure.
