It's one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and now Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has revealed plans to start human testing of its experimental coronavirus vaccine by September.
According to J&J, the vaccine would then be ready for emergency use in early 2021.
J&J also committed more than $1 billion (£810 million) of investment along with US agency Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to co-fund vaccine research, expanding a previous collaboration.
Global efforts are underway to develop a vaccine for the virus that has killed over 34,000 worldwide, but experts have cautioned it could take over a year to have a vaccine ready.
A patient was dosed with Moderna Inc's vaccine in an early-stage trial earlier this month, making it the front runner in the race to develop a viable vaccine.
J&J said in January it had begun working on a possible vaccine for the coronavirus, using the same technologies used to make its experimental Ebola vaccine.
The news comes shortly after scientists controversially claimed that healthy volunteers should purposefully be infected with the virus to speed up the production of a vaccine.
The scientists, led by Harvard University, warned that every week a vaccine is delayed will be ‘accompanied by many thousands of deaths globally.’
And while the approach of infected healthy volunteers is no doubt risky, the researchers claim the tactic could ‘shave months’ off vaccine development.
In their paper, they explained: “Challenging volunteers with this live virus risks inducing severe disease and possibly even death.
“However, we argue that such studies, by accelerating vaccine evaluation, could reduce the global burden of coronavirus related mortality and morbidity.”
