How to boost and accelerate new drug development in Korea: business ecosystem perspectives.

Abstract

Vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic were developed at an unprecedented speed. For example, tozinameran (Comirnaty®, Pfizer-BioNTech) and elasomeran (Spikevax, Moderna), mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, were granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration within just 10 months since COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization [1]. They were the first COVID-19 vaccines approved by the regulatory authority in the world. Soon after, the regulatory agencies in other countries or regions also granted EUA or full approval to tozinameran and elasomeran as the first vaccines in their territories [1], and people in many of those areas were able to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Interestingly, these 2 vaccines were both developed by a pharmaceutical company based in the US, i.e., Pfizer (tozinameran) and Moderna (elasomeran) [1].