#14506
Re: Novavax (NVAX): Un Nuevo Comienzo
Entrevista a Stan: no puede hablar más claro y con mayor firmeza como tanto habíamos demandado!
Stan Erck Interview on Bloomberg - Transcript
BB: Into the world of vaccines...Monday’s we continue to get some updates. Pfizer and Moderna and Astrazenaca in the last few weeks have released their vaccine trial results. Novavax is another one today. They are erasing what was a pre-market drop. A study in the UK has reached full enrollment and they are going to have results in the 1st quarter. That is offsetting the more negative news this morning that the US study is delayed for a 2nd time. The markets when it comes to NVAX really liking the UK enrollment announcement.
The difference between what’s going on in the UK and going on in the US. Investors want to get some answers to that and who better to provide those answers than the CEO, of Novavax, joining us right now, Stan Erck. Great to have you hear today.
Can you start off by explaining in layman’s terms why we’re seeing the discrepancy between the progress you are making in regards to the US study and what we are seeing the UK?
SE: Sure. We announced a couple of pieces of news today. And a real important announcement was the final enrollment of 15,000 plus people in the UK and 4,400 people in South Africa. I think those are really great executions of clinical trials and now we await and collect data to see what the efficacy levels of those 2 trials are. A really important milestone that we’ve achieved. The teams down there did a great job.
The US announcement was merely that we’ve lost maybe a couple, a few weeks because what we’re doing in the US is were scaling up the process so when we get approvals so that when we get approvals we’ll have a robust commercial scale production process and it just takes time to go from low scale — 50 - 100 liter production up to 2000, 4000 liter production. We are doing that. We have to have all the assays in place. Discussions with the FDA. Going along fine. There are no roadblocks. It takes a few... just takes longer.
BB: Takes longer for manufacturing? Therefore Stan is it? Why did you think it would be sooner than what it turns out to be?
SE: We are always aggressive on our timelines. Optimistic that snafus won’t occur. We’ve run into things. Never been done before. Learn some things along the way and that’s what we’re doing.
BB: What is the level of efficacy that you would be happy with given the 95% results from the other vaccine makers?
SE: Our expectation is that it’ll be in that ballpark. What you can do and all you can do when you look across vaccines is to look at how we did in pre-clinical studies in NHPs. What levels of efficacy and immunogenicity did we get. Same thing in Phase 1 trials. We came out equal to or ahead of these vaccines. We stand side-by-side with them and I expect our data will be quite good.
BB: The expectations in the market right now is that the data will be quite good. I am curious a little bit if you could provide a little more insight into the manufacturing process. Whether NVAX is going to have the capability to scale this product out there to market assuming you’ll get FDA approval for it.
SE: There’s a couple issues and one of which is scale and one of which is stability. We’ve been able to show scale. We’ve put together a global network of manufacturing partnerships. That go all the way up to scale of 6,000 liters and 4,000 Liters to 2,000 liters. Multiple bioreactor’s in each of these plants. We’re doing this in 7 different countries. It’s huge because this is a global problem. We can’t just make product in the United States and expect it to be shipped globally. We have the capability of doing that. We expect to supply with out partnerships, particularly with the Serum Institute we expect to supply a vast segment. Not just the high income but in the low and middle income countries.
We also need a product that’s stable and our product has shown maybe the best stability of any of the products out there. -storage in 2 to 8 degrees centigrade and perhaps room temperature storage.
BB: Do you feel pressure in matching the 95% efficacy? Do you feel under duress?
SE: There’s a range. No one knows the range. Started out at 95. Over time that number will bounce around. If we are in that range, we’ll be happy.
BB: Partnerships? Do you think to partner with countries that don’t have agreements in place?
SE: Work in progress actually. Many countries are making commitments to multiple vaccines. We don’t know the data. Not just efficacy but safety and logistics for shipping products. They want to have options including the EU and COVAX facility out of GAVI. There are all talking to us. They are all making demand projections. We’re doing the same thing.
BB: We wish you well Stan. For the good of your company and the good of everyone that your manufacturing expansion plans here in the US get on track.