"With much of the world under some form of lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, and debates rage over when, and how, to reopen the global economy in order to avoid the next great depression, the light at the end of the tunnel has been top-down predictions of a vaccine within 18 months."

This is a fine summary of where we are in the vaccine world by a Ph.D. who has a knack for crisp and understandable explanations.

“Time for another look at the coronavirus vaccine front, since we have several recent news items. Word has come from GSK and Sanofi that they are going to collaborate on vaccine development, which brings together two of the more experienced large organizations in the field. It looks like Sanofi is bringing the spike protein and GSK is bringing the adjuvant (more on what that means below). Their press release says that they plan to go into human patients late this year and to have everything ready for regulatory filing in the second half of 2021. For its part, Pfizer has announced that they’re pushing up their schedule with BioNTech and possibly starting human trials in August, which probably puts them on a similar timeline for eventual filing.”

"A human trial being held in Washington State to research a promising drug designed to fight COVID-19 is reportedly going better than expected, and it's possible that a handful of infected patients - likely health-care workers - could be administered the drug by the fall."

"As they race to test an experimental coronavirus vaccine, researchers aren’t waiting to see how well it prevents infection in animals before trying it in people, breaking from the usual protocol."