Postponed Clinical Trials Have Come Back To Bite Us
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers are awaiting federal approval to begin a clinical trial of a vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Everyone at UPMC should be proud of the work of Dr. Andrea Gambotto, associate professor of surgery at the Pitt School of Medicine, and Dr. Louis Falo, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine professor and chair of dermatology, for their quick work over the past eight weeks. The doctors have been able to piggyback on research they started in 2003 with the SARS virus and again in 2014 with the arrival of the MERS-CoV-2 virus to find a COVID-19 vaccine that has allowed mice to build up antibodies to the virus within two weeks of receiving the vaccine.
What’s heartbreaking, as the number of people becoming sick skyrocket and the number of people dying from COVID-19 continue increasing, is the fact that the University of Pittsburgh researchers could have been doing clinical trials on their vaccine last year. In fact, some of the clinical trials could have happened back in 2003.
Gambotto told reporters in a virtual news conference Thursday that funding dried up in 2003 when the SARS virus suddenly disappeared. There was no funding available for a clinical trial last year in the wake of the MERS-CoV-2 outbreak.
We said it before in this space, but it bears repeating after listening to Gambotto on Thursday — pandemic research needs to be a national priority.