As Race to Develop Covid-19 Vaccine Hots Up, Expert Group Comes Together for Consultations

Over 50,000 deaths and more than 27 lakh cases in the country, but the race to developing a vaccine against COVID-19 is only heating up now.

Two crucial meetings have been held over the last seven days to discuss the way forward on the vaccine development. The first meeting took place on August 12, the second one on August 17.

The expert group on vaccines is chaired by Dr VK Paul, Head of the National Task Force against COVID-19 in India. The other members include Secretary, Health Secretary Biotechnology, Secretary MEA, DGHS Health, Director AIIMS, Head ECD, Director JIPMER and involves representatives from States and Department of expenditure.

The meeting conducted on August 17 involved five domestic COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, including representatives from Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila and those whose vaccines are in different stages of clinical trial. Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, based in Pune, and Biological E in Hyderabad, too, attended the meeting.

Of the three domestic vaccines, Oxford University's Astra Zeneca, being developed by Serum Institute of India seems to be a front-runner with the vaccine candidate starting phase 2 and 3 trials this week.

Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Zydus Cadilla's ZyCoV-D are at phase 1 and phase 2 stage of trial respectively. While Zydus has said that it may be able to launch a vaccine by 2021, Serum Institute says they would be in a position to launch a vaccine by the end of 2020. The SII, which is set to start phase 2 and 3 trials this week, has shortlisted 10 centres.

Biological E. Limited (BE), a Hyderabad-based pharmaceuticals & Biologics company, which also participated in Monday's meeting on vaccines against COVID-19, has also announced acquisition of Akorn India Limited and is in the process of developing a vaccine. The company may also be able to use the facilities at Akorn India Paonta Sahib Plant in Himachal Pradesh for commercial scale manufacture of the vaccine at the appropriate time.

“We are happy to have made a strategic investment in acquiring Akorn India. We would leverage BE’s and Akorn India’s capabilities to enhance our supply capacities both in Vaccines and in Generic Injectables. The timing of this acquisition is fortuitous as it will immediately allow us to expand our capacity to manufacture our investigational COVID-19 vaccine. With these capacities, we would be in a position to offer over 1 billion doses per annum,” said Mahima Datla, Managing Director, Biological E. Limited.

The government’s expert group has asked the manufacturers to prepare a roadmap on how soon they can start manufacturing the vaccine and also the price they would expect for it. There is no pre-production deal yet nor is there any data suggesting how the trials are coming along.