The Biovac Institute, South Africa’s partly state-owned vaccine producer, has clinched a deal with the International Vaccine Institute to make an oral cholera inoculation as recent global outbreaks of the diarrhoeal disease push up demand.
News24 reports the agreement includes both licensing and technology transfer and is significant for Biovac because it will beef up drug substance manufacturing capability.
Being able to produce the raw material needed to make vaccines is one of the last steps missing from manufacturers on the continent and will help scale up the local production of clinical trial products.
Less than 1% of the world’s vaccines are made in Africa, even as infectious diseases are the leading cause of death on the continent, especially in children under five.
“The pandemic exposed Africa’s lack of local production capacity,” said Morena Makhoana, Biovac’s chief executive officer, “and increasing self-sufficiency is important if we are to have better control over our public health and vaccine supply chains.”
Biovac has been ramping up its ability to make vaccines and in September produced its first batch of COVID-19 shots as part of an arrangement to fill and package as many as 100m doses a year of Pfizer and BioNtech’s inoculation.
The technology transfer process for the oral cholera vaccine will start in January, with the first clinical trial batches expected to be produced in 2024. The first phase of the project will be supported by R120m from Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
News24 article – South Africa’s Biovac signs deal to produce oral cholera vaccine (Open access)
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