Toward an observatory of the evolution of COVID-19 Vaccines Trials through phylomemy reconstruction

This paper aims at reconstructing the evolution of all the available COVID-19 vaccines trials extracted from the COVID-NMA database by applying the phylomemy reconstruction process. We visualize the textual contents of 1,794 trials descriptions and explore their collective structure along with their semantic dynamics. We map the continuous progress of the main COVID-19 vaccine platforms from their early-stage trials in February 2020 to their most recent combinations driven by the rise of variants of concern, third dose issues and heterologous vaccinations. This paper brings insights for the global coordination between research teams especially in crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.