The Brazilian government announced that it is suspending work on a Phase III clinical trial of the Xincrown vaccine in Brazil by China’s Kexing Biotech. At the same time, Brazil is reportedly in contact with U.S.-based Pfizer Inc. to discuss the purchase of the vaccine.
The Brazilian government’s decision on Monday (Nov. 9) was posted on the website of Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA). The decision said only that there had been an “adverse serious event” in Chinese clinical trials of the vaccine in Brazil, but did not go into more detail and did not say how long Kexing’s trials in the country would be halted.
Brazil is one of the countries with the worst global outbreak of the pandemic. The latest count of infections is 5,675,000 and the death toll is 163,000. The severity of the epidemic has forced the Brazilian government to rush for an early vaccine, and it has agreed to cooperate with China to allow Kexing to conduct Phase 3 clinical trials in Brazil.
But recently, the Brazilian government’s trust in Chinese vaccines appears to have been shaken.
Previously, on Oct. 21, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Brazil would not buy Chinese vaccines. But then the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) said that Brazilian authorities had received special permission to import 6 million doses of CoronaVac, a vaccine being developed by the company.
Corning said in a statement Tuesday that it would continue to communicate with Brazil on the matter. The clinical trial in Brazil was conducted in strict accordance with Good Clinical Practice, and we are confident in the safety of the vaccine,” the statement said.
The so-called Good Clinical Trial Practices for Medicines is an international standard for the ethics and data quality of clinical research.
At the same time as the vaccine trial at Kexin Biotech suffered a new setback, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals announced news of significant results from its vaccine clinical trials. The company said its vaccine exceeded the coveted 90 percent effectiveness mark and plans to bring 20 million doses to market by the end of the year.
Since the outbreak of the neoconavirus pandemic, there has been a fierce race to develop a vaccine. There are currently about 10 companies with vaccines in Phase III clinical trials. In the United States, there are four companies – Pfizer, Modena, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax.
There are also four companies in China: Sinopharm, Beijing Institute of Biological Sciences, China Kexing and the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences.
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