French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said on Tuesday it was stopping work on an mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 despite positive test results as it lags behind rivals on producing a coronavirus shot, reports CNA.
The company said it would focus instead on another type of jab it is developing with British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline and which is in the final phase of human trials.
Sanofi's mRNA vaccine - the ground-breaking technology used by rivals Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna - had positive results in phase one and two of clinical trials, the firm said.
But Sanofi said it will not take it into the third and final phase, arguing that it would arrive too late to market with 12 billion Covid-19 doses due to be produced by the end of the year.
Instead, the company will use the mRNA technology for vaccines against other pathogens, including the flu.
"The need is not to create new Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, but to equip France and Europe with an arsenal of messenger RNA vaccines for the next pandemic, for new pathologies," Sanofi's vice-president for vaccines, Thomas Triomphe, told AFP.
"There is no public health need for another messenger RNA vaccine" against Covid-19, he added.
Results from phase three trials of the other vaccine developed with GlaxoSmithKline are expected before the end of 2021.