Most of the survey respondents said that they were working on developing medicines against COVID-19. Treatment for COVID-19 was most common, selected by over a third of respondents, while there was a fairly even split between respondents working on vaccines and diagnostics.
Respondents who selected ‘Other’ said they were working on process development and manufacturing tools specific to COVID-19-related products.
Relating to your COVID-19 research and development, what is the single biggest challenge/obstacle you are trying to overcome?
In responses to this open answered question, supply chain issues were the most reported, including shortages of raw materials. Adhering to timelines was the next most common problem, followed by logistics and distribution. Respondents also raised a number of other issues, such as resistance mutation and patient recruitment for clinical trials.
Responses included:
“Shortage of consumables!”
“Successful tech transfer in extraordinarily aggressive timelines”
“Supply issues, less face to face interactions”
“Accelerating research program with limited time in the lab”
“Raw material supply and manufacturing capacity”
“NLP predictive algorithm for virus, bacteria and mammals mutation”
“Repurposing old drugs: early promises from small, late disappointments from larger trials”
“Mutation and resistance”
“Specificity of antigen tests”
“Funding and research technology”
“Speed of result”
“Getting harder to recruit the patients”
“Availability of primary packaging material”
“Scale-up”
“Logistics challenges with raw material shortages”
“High number of patients with COVID-19 in the university hospital”
“Low productivity of vaccine manufacture process”
“Supplier transparency”
“Limited resources”
Athersys and Sorrento were the top predicted companies to find the greatest success with their COVID-19 therapies, closely followed by The Cure Alliance.
