There's a lot of buzz right now about the race to develop coronavirus vaccines. Is this the kind of race where there will be only one big winner? In this Fool Live video, Healthcare and Cannabis bureau Corinne Cardina and longtime Motley Fool contributor Keith Speights answer this question and discuss which method of coronavirus vaccine development is most likely to be used in treating other diseases.
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Corinne Cardina: We've touched on this a little bit. Mabel wants to know, ''Is the vaccine market one size takes all or will multiple ones be needed?'' Is this a one-winner or multiple winners coming through over waves?
Keith Speights: Yeah, it's absolutely a multiple winner type market. This isn't going to be winner take all.
Part of it is just the sheer numbers involved. None of these vaccine makers have indicated that they're going to be able to produce, I think AstraZeneca (AZN 1.03%) might be the highest. They're saying they can produce maybe 2 billion vaccines beginning next year. Novavax (NVAX 2.95%), I think is in that general ballpark as well. Some of the others are around a billion.
The world population is much larger than that and especially when you consider many of these vaccines require two doses. Realistically, there is no way that one vaccine is going to be able to meet all of the demand. We're going to really need multiple vaccines to be safe and effective.
Corinne Cardina: Mike Megliory wants to know, ''Which of these methods is the most versatile. By that I mean, which company could use this technology to make vaccines for other diseases? Will one strategy give that company a leg up for the next pandemic?'' We did talk about Moderna (MRNA 3.28%) a little bit. Is that what your answer would be?
Keith Speights: Absolutely. I would also throw in Pfizer (PFE 0.23%) and BioNTech (BNTX 0.55%) because they are also using the messenger RNA approach. I'm intrigued personally by the mRNA approach, and I think it could be very applicable to treating not only other viral diseases, but other diseases in general, including cancer, several types of cancer, some heart disease.
I think the sky's the limit for mRNA if it works as hoped. Those companies, Moderna, BioNTech, I would really keep my eye on because like I mentioned with Moderna, if their coronavirus vaccine works, then the entire value of their pipeline, I think, goes up tremendously.
