Johnson & Johnson is set to begin human trials of COVID-19 vaccine in September

Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to discuss a potential vaccine for COVID-19.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: You're watching Yahoo Finance live. I'm Julie Hyman. We learned yesterday that Johnson & Johnson had come to a deal with the federal government to increase its manufacturing capacity to develop a vaccine for coronavirus.

We're joined now by Dr. Paul Stoffels. He is the Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson. We appreciate you joining us, sir. I'm sure you are very busy.

I have seen some [INAUDIBLE] expressed in the medical community about coming up with a vaccine and getting it up out there quickly. Can you please walk me through the process here, and realistically, how soon we could expect to see this?

PAUL STOFFELS: Let me explain what we are doing. We are building on a platform which we have used already four times for four different vaccines-- for HIV, for RSV, Ebola, Zika. And four times we developed from the virus to getting it into animals, getting into humans, and also scale it up.

So the process we have here is quite well described. And we know exactly what we need to do, step-by-step. And that's why we can plan, we can prepare, and we can make sure we can keep on timelines.

So in the past 10 weeks, we have gone from the virus to 10 different-- more than 10 different vaccine constructs, test them in animals, and have concluded that we have a very-- we have a very active vaccine, as we have shown in animal models, with-- with-- with neutralizing antibodies. And so our plan is now in doing parallel, start development of the vaccine, as well as starting scale-up. Because the scale-up process lasts like eight to ten months.

And we are going to do both in parallel-- a vaccine to further animal testing, clinical trials, as well as starting to scale up this week.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Dr. Stoffels, Adam Shapiro here. I know that you-- Johnson & Johnson entered into roughly a billion dollar deal with the US government to help develop the vaccine once it's ready to go. If another company lands upon a vaccine before J&J, would you make that company's vaccine in your facilities in the Netherlands and in the facility you're building here?

PAUL STOFFELS: Yeah, that would be very difficult, because all of these vaccines use different technologies. We use a vector technology and a cell line to produce. And so with [? our ?] 26, we know producing on a cell line works out. Our technology is very difficult to take other vaccines in. And it will take like 12, 18, up to 24 months to tune up-- to turn around this type of technology to possibilities for all us.

So that's-- that's very challenging. Time to result here is quite unique, because even now, if we start-- we scale up with the 50 liter to 1,000 liter, we have 1,000 people involved worldwide to make sure that the development and the manufacturing goes. It's not like you can turn around a manufacturing plant like that overnight and say we do-- we do something else.

And that's why we have stayed the course. We put the train on the rails. And we go high speed to results.

JULIE HYMAN: Dr. Stoffels, I want to ask you about clinical trials as well. I believe you have talked about potentially September, as soon as September. But there have been some challenges already to getting those clinical trials to go, to actually happen. And so is that the correct timeline?

PAUL STOFFELS: Well, yes, we have worked with the regulators. The discussions have been happening with the European regulators, with the US regulators, to align on timeline, the preclinical timelines, and what we need to do to kick off the phase ones. And we think we have it all under control, and that we can go to first beginning in September.

What will be the more challenging question, how fast can we do-- getting-- getting the vaccine in clinical trials for efficacy? And we'll have to follow where in the world the vaccine-- the epidemic at that moment is happening in order to do a prevention study. And we'll have to recruit very fast.

Now the benefit for vaccines is that you recruit healthy people, like you and me. And we find-- we need to find the volunteers who want to participate in that. And that's an easier way to recruit. So in vaccine studies, you can recruit 100 to 1,000 a day, as long as you organize it. And that's where we think we can go fast in this clinical trial settings.

ADAM SHAPIRO: And what does success look like? Because we know the flu vaccine is not 100% effective. So what's the percentage of efficacy which will determine if this works?

PAUL STOFFELS: Well, that's-- that's a very good question. We don't know. But there are two things we tried to do, is to learn whether it prevents infection, and to learn whether it prevents severe disease. I think two-- the two things are important. Preventing severe disease will be an outcome, or preventing-- and/or preventing infection.

I won't put predictive rates. That is together with the health care authorities, we have to say what is the prevent-- what is the protection rate we will get? But hopefully very good. And we have good experience, so I hope we can get to a quite significant level. But that needs to be shown in the clinical trials.

JULIE HYMAN: Dr. Paul Stoffels is Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson. Sir, thank you very much. Appreciate your time.