Efforts to develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus are going full steam ahead both in Japan and around the world.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 120 vaccines are being researched worldwide, with 10 having already started clinical trials.
The U.S. biotech company Moderna Inc. plans to start a clinical trial--the final stage in vaccine development--this summer.
British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC has announced it intends to start shipping a vaccine that is currently in clinical trials in September.
A Chinese team conducting a clinical trial in Wuhan, Hubei Province, announced it has confirmed antibodies that demonstrate possible immunity.
In Japan, the government plans to allocate about 200 billion yen to support vaccine development in a draft of a second supplementary budget.
This would be used to beef up development funds at research institutes and to support the creation of production systems alongside research and development efforts. It would also fund the purchase and stockpiling of needles and other equipment needed for administering a vaccine.
Osaka Prefecture-based medical start-up AnGes Inc. is developing a vaccine that artificially synthesizes a portion of the virus' DNA and is preparing for a clinical trial to confirm its safety in several dozen health care workers.
It plans to expand the study to several hundred people in autumn or later, with the vaccine ready for practical use by March. If successful, the firm expects to be able to supply enough for 200,000 people.
Osaka-based pharmaceutical giant Shionogi & Co. aims to manufacture enough vaccines that use viral proteins for 10 million people by next autumn.
The Kumamoto-based drug company KM Biologics Co. is developing an inactivated vaccine, which uses viruses that can no longer cause disease, and the Tokyo-based pharmaceutical start-up ID Pharma Co. is working on a vaccine that inserts genes from the new coronavirus into a different virus.
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