Tchad Tribune

PRETORIA, Scientists in South Africa have made a copy of the Moderna Covid vaccine, a move which they say could help boost vaccination rates across Africa.

The continent currently has the lowest uptake of Covid shots in the world.

The company behind the new vaccine – Afrigen Biologics – says it hopes to start clinical trials in November.

Moderna previously said it would not enforce the patents on its vaccine, allowing scientists in Cape Town to make their own version of it.

The researchers were backed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Petro Terblanche, director of Afrigen Biologics, said they were starting small, but had ambitions to scale up quickly.

“We have used the sequence, which is the same sequence as the Moderna vaccine 1273,” she said.

“This is part of a global initiative to build capacity and capability in low and middle-income countries to become self-sufficient.”

The shot being copied is a messenger RNA vaccine made by US firm Moderna. Pfizer-BioNTech also made its vaccine using the same technology. They were some of the first Covid vaccines to be authorised for use around the world.

This type of vaccine teaches cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response inside our bodies, rather than putting a weakened or inactivated germ into the body.

The company’s chief scientist, Dr Caryn Fenner, called the achievement “really significant”.

“It puts the power in our hands to be able to produce our own vaccines for the future, to be ready for further pandemics, to produce clinical trial material on African soil and then to look at other diseases of relevance in Africa.”

Many of Africa’s countries have fully vaccinated less than 10% of their populations, compared to 60% in North America, 63% in Europe and 61% across Asia. Despite having one of the best rates on the continent, South Africa has only vaccinated 27% of its people.

It’s been reported that BioNTech – the company which partnered Pfizer in producing an mRNA vaccine – also has plans to open a vaccine manufacturing plant on the continent.

A number of other Covid-19 vaccine production facilities are in the pipeline in Africa, mainly focused on Russian and Chinese-made vaccines.

This could be a major breakthrough for the African continent.

The vast majority of mRNA vaccines have gone to wealthy countries and there have been sketchy plans to make these on African soil.

But because Moderna said it wouldn’t enforce the patent rights on its vaccine, scientists have been able to reverse engineer it via a special World Health Organization-funded hub in Cape Town.

Although the quantities made so far are small, it’s been developed more quickly than many expected.

If the scale-up goes well and the trials succeed, it could be the start of more equal access to these cutting-edge vaccines.

It will also be interesting to see how Moderna responds now that scientists have cracked the code of its vaccine.

The pharmaceutical industry in general has opposed a campaign to waive intellectual property rights on Covid vaccines, arguing they are too complex to be made independently and that it would stunt innovation in the private sector.

Campaigners point out huge amounts of public money were poured into many of the vaccine projects.

Source: Nam News Network

GENEVA— More than 12,500 coronavirus-related deaths were registered worldwide in the past 24 hours, making Thursday the deadliest day since July 2021, the World Health Organization said.

As of Feb 3, as many as 383,509,779 novel coronavirus cases and 5,690,824 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe.

The number of confirmed cases grew by 3,015,863 over the past day and the number of fatalities increased by 12,513. It was the highest daily fatality figure registered since July 21, 2021, when the novel coronavirus infection claimed the lives of 20,111 people all over the world.

The WHO statistics is based on officially confirmed data from the countries. The threshold of 350 million cases was crossed on Jan 25, of 300 million on Jan 8, of 250 million on Nov 9, of 200 million on Aug 5.

The biggest number of coronavirus cases was reported from the United States (74,787,329), followed by India (41,803,318), Brazil (25,620,209), France (19,322,157) and the United Kingdom (17,515,203). The biggest number of fatalities was reported from the United States (884,477), followed by Brazil (628,067), India (498,983), Russia (333,357) and Mexico (306,920).

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

South African pharmaceutical company Afrigen is the first on the continent to make an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine using Moderna’s publicly available data. The company hopes to start clinical trials of the vaccine in November.

Afrigen is one of the companies taking part in a World Health Organization-backed hub to develop vaccines for low- and middle-income countries. Afrigen Managing Director Petro Terblanche said the mRNA vaccine was made with the company’s own knowledge base, processes and people. She said there were no technology transfers from any third party.

“The latest development at the mRNA hub at Afrigen in Cape Town is that our scientists have used the sequence of the Moderna vaccine 1273 published by Stanford University in an open-source manner and formulated a drug product at laboratory scale. They are currently doing more batches and analytical tests to make sure that they have the quality in place. So this is the first lab scale full end-to-end vaccine candidate that has been developed,” she said.

Terblanche said the company did not need permission from Moderna because its vaccine is still in the research and development stage.

“The sequence is published in the first place, secondly we are operating in the R&D space,” she said. “We have full freedom to operate, an exemption under the Bolar Exemption in IP law. So up to phase 3 clinical trials we are completely legal, and we don’t need any permission. Once that product is commercialized and there are IP constraints, we need to get a voluntary license for that.”

Terblanche said they would be asking Moderna to voluntarily license the vaccine to them, as it will be mutually beneficial to the companies and to low- and middle-income countries that will use this technology.

She added that they were using the new vaccine as a test case for a second-generation vaccine that is in the design phase.

Moderna has not commented on Afrigen’s announcement, but it was widely reported late last year that the company had paused a patent dispute with the U.S. government over its coronavirus vaccine.

Moderna had been disputing claims that three U.S. government scientists were co-inventors. However, the company said it would not pursue the fight for now, as it did not want to take attention away from battling the pandemic.

Terblanche acknowledged support from scientists in other countries for Afrigen’s work.

“This is our learning case and we’re pleasantly surprised with the results, but the design of the new formulation is already happening with the scientists and with technical partners globally,” she said. “It’s not only us, it’s a fantastic partnership with scientists in the U.S. and in Europe.”

South Africa’s acting director general of the National Health Department, Dr. Nicholas Crisp, welcomed news of the mRNA vaccine development.

“We’re very pleased to note that they’ve been picking up speed very fast in their capabilities,” he said. “It’s very exciting, it’s very important for the country. It’s one of a number of facilities that we are busy working on as a country between the department of health and science and innovation and other partners. So very encouraging.”

The World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said 11% of the African population is fully vaccinated, and 85% have not received a single dose. She added that 239,000 people in Africa have died due to the pandemic.

Source: Voice of America