What antibiotics developers can learn from COVID-19 vaccine trials
British clinical trials expert Stephen Senn explains in a viewpoint essay on the GARDP website what can be learnt from COVID-19 vaccine trials for the development of new antimicrobials.
The development of vaccines for COVID-19 has been a magnificent achievement. At least five of these vaccines have been trialled in various European countries or North America. Table 1 summarises the vaccines and their characteristics. For further reading, I recommend Comparing the COVID-19 Vaccines: How Are They Different? by Kathy Katella1. In this article, I shall discuss various statistical aspects of five large phase 3 trials used to support vaccine registration in order to learn what key aspects of their success could inform other fields such as antimicrobial R&D.