Eye on affordability, 8 vaccines under production in India

Global frontrunners Pfizer and Moderna are messenger RNA vaccines which are more expensive than usual mainly due to requirements of storage at very low temperatures

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 10

India is eyeing affordable Covid-19 vaccines with as many as eight under production in the country.

Apart from the two leading vaccine candidates involving Indian companies — Serum Institute’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech-ICMR’s Covaxin, six more vaccines are in advanced stages of development at home.

Cadila Healthcare Ahmedabad’s ZyCoV-D, an indigenous DNA vaccine, is currently in phase 2 trials, while Sputnik V, the Russian candidate which has collaborated with Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy’s for India trials, has completed phase 2 trials and will start on late stage phase 3 tests next week.

Serum Institute is involved in the production of yet another Covid vaccine in collaboration with US firm Novavax.

Phase 3 trials of the Novavax-Serum Institute product are currently under consideration of the national drug regulator.

Another Hyderabad-based company Biological E is working with MIT, US, on a recombinant protein antigen based Covid vaccine with pre-clinical trials (animal toxicity studies) over and phase 1 and 2 combined human clinical trials underway.

Pune’s Genova is working with the American biopharmaceutical company HDT on a messenger RNA vaccine with human trials all set to start.

Bharat Biotech is jointly working with Thomas Jefferson University of the US on one more vaccine, which is using the inactivated rabies vector platform.

Sources in the government said indigenous production would help the country roll out affordable Covid vaccines with inoculation drive expected to last for well over a year.

A larger number of successful vaccines will give India leeway in price negotiations.

Current global frontrunner vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna are messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines which are expensive and require storage at lower temperatures.

“Unlike many vaccines that use a weakened or inactivated form of a virus, mRNA vaccines do not use the live virus that causes Covid-19,” Centres for Diseases Control, US says.