Covid: South Africa manufactures its own version of Moderna’s vaccine

A team of scientists in South Africa has manufactured a copy of Moderna’s vaccine against covid-19.

This achievement, the researchers say, could help increase rates vaccination in Africa.

Currently, the continent has the rate of vaccinated against covid lowest in the world.

Afrigen Biologics, the company that developed this new vaccine, says it hopes to begin clinical trials in November.

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Previously, Moderna had said it would not apply the patent restrictions of his vaccine, which allowed scientists in Cape Town to make their own version.

The South African researchers were supported by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Petro Terblanche, director of Afrigen Biologics, said they were starting small but had the ambition to grow quickly.

“We use the same sequence as the Moderna 1273 vaccine,” Terblanche told the BBC.

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“This is part of a global initiative to build capacity in low- and middle-income countries, so that they are self sufficient“.

mRNA vaccine

The vaccine developed in South Africa is a copy of the messenger RNA manufactured by the American laboratory Moderna.

Pfizer-BioNTech he also created his vaccine using mRNA technology.

Those of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were among the first vaccinations to be authorized to combat covid-19 worldwide.

This type of vaccine teaches cells how to produce a protein that, when infected, triggers a immune response inside the person’s body, instead of introducing a weakened or inactivated germ into the body, as other vaccines do.

Caryn Fenner, chief scientist at Afrigen Biologics, called this development an achievement. “really significant”.

“It gives us the power to produce our own vaccines for the future, be prepared for future pandemics, produce clinical trial material on African soil and then analyze other diseases of relevance in Africa,” he added.

Vaccination in Africa

Almost half of the countries in Africa have fully vaccinated less than 10% of their population, compared to 65% in the United States and Canada, 64% in Latin America, 63% in Europe, and 60% in Asia.

Despite having one of the best rates on the continent, South Africa has only vaccinated 27% of its population.

On the other hand, BioNTech, the company that partnered with Pfizer to produce an mRNA vaccine, has plans to open a manufacture of vaccines on the continent.

Several covid-19 vaccine production facilities are in the works in Africa, primarily focused on those created in Russia and China.

Analysis by Naomi Grimley, BBC Global Health Correspondent

This could be a great advance for the African continent.

The vast majority of mRNA vaccines went to rich countries and there were incomplete plans to manufacture them on African soil.

Because Moderna said it would not enforce patent rights on its vaccine, scientists in South Africa were able to apply reverse engineering in a special WHO-funded center in Cape Town.

Although the quantities manufactured so far are small, it was developed faster than many expected.

If the expansion goes well and the trials are successful it could be the start of a more equitable access to these cutting-edge vaccines.

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

The pharmaceutical industry has generally opposed a campaign to waive intellectual property rights on covid vaccines, arguing that they are too complex to manufacture independently and that it would hamper innovation in the private sector.

Patent release activists, for their part, point out that they invested huge amounts of public money in many of the projects for the development of vaccines.

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