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My name's Jakub Simon and
I'm the Director of Vaccines Clinical
Research at Merck Research Laboratories.
And today I'll be covering the Ebola
vaccine story as a case study,
to explore challenges and opportunities
of accelerated vaccine development.
And before we start,
I would like you to take a moment to
imagine yourself in an Ebola outbreak.
People around you are getting sick,
6 people that you know got infected,
4 of them died and
reflect on your thoughts.
You want to leave the area, you'll like
a treatment, you'll like a vaccine.
How quickly would you like a treatment or
vaccine available is the topic
of today's discussion.
And we'll cover the Ebola
vaccine case study.
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So we'll start by looking at vaccine
development under normal circumstances,
talk a little bit about Ebola.
And the reason Ebola is a good case study
is it that it covers all of the usual
regulatory manufacturing non clinical and
clinical development
components that we'll explore.
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Vaccine development under normal
circumstances is a complex process
that poses many challenges.
The average development
takes over 10 years and
costs over $2 billion US,
that is billion with a B.
So if you just take two numbers,
those two numbers and
divide them you get over
$200 million per year.
The reason clinical development is so
expensive, is because it is subject to
rigorous oversight that includes testing
by national regulatory authorities.
And that is in order to ensure that
the vaccines are safe, potent and
effective each time that
they're manufactured.
And this is to address vaccine
hesitancy and public distrust.
Proactively, make sure that there aren't
any problems with vaccines and medicines.
Despite these challenges, one of
the most cost effective means to prevent
infectious diseases and
contain outbreaks are vaccines.
