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Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / dpa
The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) is one of two German drug approval authorities responsible for vaccines and biomedical drugs.
It has been headed for eleven years by Klaus Cichutek, a 64-year-old professor of biochemistry and the global authority for gene therapy.
In the past few months, the PEI has pooled all available forces in the fight against the coronavirus.
Clinical trials were approved in an average of 12 instead of 65 days.
Many of the vaccine developers received scientific advice beforehand so that they could properly set up their studies.
To person
Icon: enlarge Photo: Thorsten Jansen / Paul Ehrlich Institute
Klaus Cichutek
, 64, is President of the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedical Medicines.
The biochemist, who was born in Recklinghausen, is also an adjunct professor of biochemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.
Among other things, he conducted research in the areas of gene therapy, biomedical drugs and retrovirology with a focus on HIV / SIV immunopathogenesis and AIDS.
SPIEGEL:
Professor Cichutek, the number of infections is rising rapidly and the virus has the country back under control.
Many hopes now rest on a vaccine.
When is first approval to be expected?
Klaus Cichutek:
If the data show that some vaccine candidates are effective and have a favorable ratio of benefit and risk, then it is possible that individual Covid-19 vaccines can be approved in the first few months of next year.
An important and long-awaited piece of information is the result of the ongoing large phase III studies in South America, India, the USA and South Africa for proof of efficacy and vaccine safety in the period of several months after the last vaccination of around 20,000 test subjects.
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