GEORGETOWN: Guyanese scientist in Pfizer COVID vaccine team

GEORGETOWN: Guyanese-born scientist Vidia Roopchand, who is employed with Pfizer Inc is assuring that all safety standards were observed during the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Roopchand is one of several scientists who were involved in the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine called BNT162b2.

Roopchand noted that Pfizer and BioNTech began collaborating in 2018 to develop a vaccine for influenza and extended the collaboration in March 2020 with the launch of “Project Lightspeed” to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

He disclosed that the Phase 1 clinical trials began in the US and Germany in April and were designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and potential efficacy of up to four mRNA vaccine candidates and to select which vaccine candidate and dose should be taken forward for future clinical study.

One vaccine candidate – BNT162b2, was selected for the phase 3 clinical trial, which began in July with more 44,000 participants. He added that the final efficacy analysis in the ongoing Phase 3 study demonstrated a vaccine efficacy rate of 95% in participants without prior COVID-19 infection and also in participants with prior COVID-19 infection. He noted that the effectiveness of the vaccine was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics. “The observed efficacy in adults over 65 years of age was over 94%,” he said. He added that BNT162b2 was selected based on an extensive review of preclinical and clinical data from Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials.

In addition, he said, the Pfizer-BioNTech team accelerated the development process by doing some operational steps in parallel rather than sequentially as would normally be done. He explained that the investigator site selection process began earlier than normal and more persons were employed to give operations the support and flexibility needed. He added that they also invested upfront in certain areas, such as manufacturing, in order to be ready to execute as decisions were made.