Covid-19: South African scientists make own version of Moderna jab

After Moderna refused to share its mRNA vaccine knowledge, South African scientists backed by the World Health Organization (WHO), made a copy of the jab developed by the US drugmaker.

The vaccine developed by new vaccine - Afrigen Biologics may help boost vaccination rates across Africa, which has the lowest uptake of Covid shots in the world, the BBC reported.

The Cape Town-based company hopes to begin clinical trials in November.

Moderna previously said it would not enforce the patents on its vaccine, allowing scientists in Cape Town to make their own version of it, the report said.

"We have used the sequence, which is the same sequence as the Moderna vaccine 1273," Petro Terblanche, director of Afrigen Biologics, was quoted as saying.

"This is part of a global initiative to build capacity and capability in low and middle-income countries to become self-sufficient,"Terblanche said adding, they were starting small, but had ambitions to scale up quickly.

The mRNA vaccines carry the molecular information to make the protein in the host using the synthetic RNA of the virus. The host body produces the viral protein that is recognised by the immune system, thereby enabling the body to fight against the disease.

mRNA vaccines are considered safe as mRNA is non-infectious, non-integrating in nature, and degraded by standard cellular mechanisms. They are highly efficacious because of their inherent capability of being translated into proteins in the cell.

Pfizer-BioNTech also made its vaccine using the same technology. Both PfizerA and Moderna's shots were some of the first Covid vaccines to be authorised for use around the world.

In June last year, the WHO helped set up Africa's first Covid mRNA vaccine technology-transfer hub in South Africa, with participants including Afrigen, the Biovac Institute and local universities. The aim was to scale up vaccine production to address those massive shortfalls in the developing world.

The WHO had reached out to Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech to help teach researchers in low- and middle-income countries how to make their Covid-19 vaccines. But the companies did not respond.

Moderna's shot was chosen to replicate because more information on its development was available publicly, compared with Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine.

According to Afrigen's chief scientist, Dr Caryn Fenner, the achievement has been "really significant".

"It puts the power in our hands to be able to produce our own vaccines for the future, to be ready for further pandemics, to produce clinical trial material on African soil and then to look at other diseases of relevance in Africa," Fenner said.

However, it could take a couple of years for large-scale production to begin. Yet it may stop the need for reliance on wealthy countries for vaccines, especially since the technology has also elicited potent immunity against infectious disease targets in animal models of influenza virus, Zika virus, rabies virus and others, especially in recent years.

It has also been employed in numerous cancer clinical trials, with some promising results showing antigen-specific T cell responses and prolonged disease-free survival in some cases.

--IANS

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