BioNTech and Pfizer have started a rolling submission of their COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The news comes days after EMA named AstraZeneca's AZD1222 as the first COVID-19 vaccine to start the rolling review process.
The EMA uses rolling reviews to start assessing data on an experimental candidate before all the evidence needed to make a final decision is available, cutting the time it takes to decide whether to approve a prospect once the pivotal clinical trial results are submitted to the agency. The pressing need for COVID-19 vaccines potentially makes the mechanism important to the current crisis.
After receiving the first part of a rolling submission, the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has begun evaluating the preclinical evidence on mRNA vaccine BNT162b2. The rolling review format provides opportunities to file additional data before the complete application. Each cycle typically requires a two-week review. The duration of the review of the final application will depend on the proportion of data already assessed by EMA under the rolling review.
The EMA accepted BNT162b2 for rolling review on the strength of the preclinical and early clinical data on the vaccine. BioNTech and Pfizer have linked BNT162b2, which encodes a SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein, to antibody and T-cell responses in people dosed in early-phase trials. The data led the partners to start a phase 3 clinical trial.
That trial has now enrolled around 37,000 participants at sites in countries including the U.S., Brazil, South Africa and Argentina, with centers in Turkey coming online to help push BioNTech and Pfizer to their enrollment target of 44,000 subjects. More than 28,000 participants have received their second dose. BioNTech and Pfizer originally planned to enroll 30,000 subjects.
The enrollment figures suggest BioNTech and Pfizer are closing in on the release of top-line data from the trial. Exactly how long the partners need to wait for efficacy data will depend on the extent to which participants have been exposed to the virus and the effectiveness of the vaccine. BioNTech and Pfizer are set to perform interim efficacy analyses when there are 32, 62, 92 and 120 COVID-19 cases in the trial.
BioNTech and Pfizer shared news of the rolling review days after the EMA said it had begun looking at data on AstraZeneca’s AZD1222. The EMA is reviewing preclinical data on AZD1222 while waiting for AstraZeneca to generate pivotal safety and efficacy results. AstraZeneca resumed dosing in a trial of AZD1222 in Japan late last week, but the U.S. study remains on hold.
Shares in BioNTech rose around 10% in premarket trading. The stock is up more than 100% this year.