New US COVID-19 vaccine eyes Botswana licensing
Mbongeni Mguni | Monday January 31, 2022 06:00
Dubbed “the world’s COVID-19 vaccine” the new vaccine technology was developed by researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine led by Drs Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez.
The new vaccine uses traditional recombinant protein-based technology that will enable its production at large scale. At present, the most popular vaccines in the world and in Botswana use the mRNA technology and include those from Pfizer and Moderna.
Protein-based vaccines, which represent the traditional method of producing vaccines, are being developed at the moment at various stages of advancement by different researchers globally.
However, already, several producers around the world have taken up the Texas research lab’s vaccine technology and are at different levels of licensing their own vaccines. India’s Biological E Limited has produced the Corbevax vaccine using the technology and has plans to produce one billion doses this year.
Producers in Bangladesh and Indonesia have licensed the technology and are different levels of producing their own vaccines from the Texas technology. In Botswana, the technology is due to come through an arrangement between the Baylor-Texas Children Centre and ImmunityBio, a biotech firm founded by Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, the US billionaire who signed an agreement with government in December to kickstart COVID-19 vaccine production in Botswana.
Hotez confirmed the latest developments to Mmegi in an exclusive interview recently.
“Yes we licensed our Baylor-Texas Children's Hospital COVID vaccine technology to ImmunityBio headed by Dr Patrick to develop and produce it in Botswana,” he said. “We also help in the co-development. No patents from our side, no strings attached.
“This came about after we had the wonderful opportunity to meet with your President, someone we admire.”
Hotez explained that the Texas Children's Centre for Vaccine Development developed a recombinant protein technology licensed with no patent to Biological E in India, BioFarma in Indonesia, Incepta in Bangladesh. ImmunityBio is working to do this in Botswana.
“The furthest ahead is Bio E whose product they named Corbevax produced in India but eventually they will provide doses to the COVAX sharing facility for Africa and elsewhere,” Hotez said. It's up to ImmunityBio and their collaborators in Botswana how they develop, produce and name their technologies.”
The vaccine technology from Baylor-Texas is just one of several that ImmunityBio is working on producing. Soon-Shiong, who was in the country recently to assess the infrastructure available for setting up, is focussing on a vaccine that boosts T cells as well as the production of antibodies. The COVID-19 vaccines currently authorised across the world target antibody production.
“While antibodies block infection when present, T cells are vital for long-term immune memory,” ImmunityBio said in a statement on their website. “Our vaccine candidates do not require the difficult storage conditions of several current vaccines, making them more practical to make, store, and distribute to remote areas. “Their potential to be more resilient than current vaccines also means that fewer doses would be required to provide longer-term immunity, further reducing the complications and costs that now prevent much of the world from being vaccinated.”
In his recent visit, Soon-Shiong toured the Botswana Digital and Innovation Hub’s Icon Building where the vaccine production centre is due to be based.
Soon-Shiong, who is estimated to have a net worth of US$11.5 billion, is a bioscientist and inventor of a renowned drug for the treatment of lung, breast, and pancreatic cancer. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of NantWorks, a holding company with interests across healthcare, technology science and others. One of these subsidiaries is ImmunityBio, which he founded in 2014.
Officials at the Botswana Medicines Regulatory Authority's Pharmacovigilance and Clinical trials department told Mmegi applications for clinical trials from Soon-Shiong or the Texas-Baylor technology had been received thus far. The officials said applications for licensing for COVID-19 vaccines provisionally take two months to assess before a decision is made.