S Africa's Afrigen makes mRNA COVID vaccine using Moderna data
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Loading... - Winnie Sanders
- 04 Feb 2022
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South Africa’s Afrigen Biologics has used the publicly available sequence of Moderna’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine to make its own version of the shot, which could be tested in humans before the end of this year, Afrigen’s top executive said on Thursday.
The vaccine candidate would be the first to be made based on a widely used vaccine without the assistance and approval of the developer. It is also the first mRNA vaccine designed, developed and produced at lab scale on the African continent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) last year picked a consortium, including Afrigen, for a pilot project to give poor and middle-income countries the know-how to make COVID-19 vaccines, after market leaders of the mRNA COVID vaccine, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna, declined a WHO request to share their technology and expertise.
The WHO and partners hope the hub will help overcome glaring inequalities between rich nations and poorer countries in accessing vaccine doses, with 99 percent of all of Africa’s vaccines imported and the negligible remainder manufactured locally.
During the pandemic, wealthy countries have hoovered up most of the world’s supplies of vaccines.
Biovac, a partly state-owned South African vaccine producer, will be the first recipient of the technology from the hub. Afrigen has also agreed to help train companies in Argentina and Brazil.
In September, the WHO’s hub in Cape Town decided to go it alone after failing to bring on board Pfizer and Moderna, both of which have argued they need to oversee any technology transfer due to the complexity of the manufacturing process.
Moderna’s vaccine was chosen due to an abundance of public information and its pledge not to enforce patents during the pandemic. It’s not clear what will happen after that.
The UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) said it was in talks with Moderna about possible access to some of its patents.
Under pressure to make drugs in lower-income countries, Moderna has announced plans to build mRNA vaccine factories in Africa, but production is still a long way off. Read More...
