Inovio Pharmaceuticals and Moderna said they are accelerating the timeline for the development of a vaccine to the coronavirus and expect to start human trials in the United States next month, reports the U.K.'s Daily Mail.
Scientists at Imperial College in London could begin human trials as soon as April.
The U.S. on Wednesday confirmed its 11th death from the coronavirus, 10 of them in Washington State and one in California.
The 51 coronavirus cases in California are the most in the U.S., but Washington has suffered all but one of the 11 deaths to date.
The virus, which started in Wuhan, China, has killed 3,200 people, the vast majority in mainland China. There are now over 92,000 global cases, with infections in more than 70 countries and territories.
Imperial College has been working on a vaccine since January.
"Most vaccines would take five years in the discovery phase and at least one to two years to manufacture and get into clinical trials," Professor Robin Shattock from Imperial, said during a podcast Tuesday.
"We're trying to short-track that . . . we have the potential to get that in human trials within four months, so a two-year cycle in four months, which has never been done before."
Pharmaceutical companies Novavax, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, and Pfizer are also all working toward vaccines.