Vaccine Giant Promises a Billion Covid Shots for Poor Countries
June 06 2020 - 5:21PM
Dow Jones News
By Eric Bellman
An Indian drug giant, little-known outside the vaccine world,
has agreed to make and distribute a billion doses of a yet-to-be
approved coronavirus vaccine -- a move aimed at providing pandemic
protection to the world's poorest.
AstraZeneca PLC this week tapped Serum Institute of India, or
SII, to be part of a global manufacturing and distribution network
for a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed by University
of Oxford researchers. Under the agreement, SII would be the main
contract manufacturer for low- and middle-income countries and
produce one billion doses -- 400 million of those this year -- if
the vaccine proves safe and effective.
AstraZeneca and most of its partners plan to start manufacturing
the vaccine candidate well before human trials are set to finish in
September, hoping to build up a stockpile to meet commitments to
quickly deliver hundreds of millions of doses. SII said Friday that
it will start making the vaccine in the next two months. It
wouldn't comment on what it would cost the company, or what it
might charge for the vaccine.
Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla, son of the family-owned
company's founder, said he is betting on Oxford's vaccine effort
because of the scientists behind the effort there, and because SII
has partnered with the university in the past on a malaria
drug.
"We have the ability to scale up very quickly with our existing
facilities," he said. "We can do a quick plug and play and stop
commercial production of other vaccines."
The Oxford-AstraZeneca effort has emerged as one of a handful of
promising Covid-19 vaccine projects around the world, in a race
that has at times taken on nationalist tones. Last month, Moderna
Inc. reported encouraging results in humans of a vaccine it has
developed. The news sent its shares surging and lifted the broader
market. CanSino Biologics Inc., based in Tianjin, China, has also
reported promising results in a preliminary human study.
The Oxford team, along with these others, still faces tough
odds. Vaccines typically take years to develop. Many past vaccine
efforts have stumbled during trial stages the Oxford vaccine
candidate has yet to successfully complete.
Britain's AstraZeneca has already agreed to make doses of the
Oxford vaccine in the U.K. and the U.S. This week, it also signed a
deal to manufacture and allocate doses, at cost, through a global
distribution system set up by international foundations.
By tapping Serum Institute of India, a private company based in
the western Indian city of Pune, AstraZeneca is turning to a giant
in making and distributing vaccines to the developing world.
SII cranks out low-price vaccines that protect against diseases
like polio, tetanus and measles, often for less than $1 a dose.
Unicef, the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation have all relied on SII to help push vaccination
across the developing world. SII says it makes about half the
vaccine doses distributed around the world -- 1.5 billion a
year.
Mr. Gates called SII founder Cyrus Poonawalla a "hero" for
bringing affordable vaccines to the masses at an event in November
honoring top contributors to public health in India.
SII says it has the available capacity to start making the
vaccine by August, as orders for other vaccines have stopped amid
world-wide lockdowns. The company said it is also ready to delay
some other deliveries and build new facilities to manufacture the
Oxford group's vaccine.
The Poonawallas have other businesses -- including real estate,
finance and green energy -- but affordable, mass-produced vaccines
is the niche they dominate. The family got into vaccines in 1966 as
an offshoot to the family's early business -- breeding and racing
horses. They used to donate retired horses to a government company
that would use them to make antitoxins to fight diseases including
diphtheria, tetanus and yellow fever.
The scarcity and expense of vaccines in India at the time gave
Cyrus Poonawalla an idea for a business. He jumped into vaccines,
starting with tetanus and antisnake-venom vaccines. While it now
excels at producing older vaccines others have developed, it also
develops its own and often teams up with other international
organizations.
The company estimates it has helped save 20 million lives to
date by bringing vaccines to countries and people who couldn't have
afforded them otherwise.
SII, with annual revenue of around $750 million, isn't listed,
so Mr. Poonawalla, the CEO, said it is his family's money that he
is betting, not investors.
"This is just the opportunity we have prepared for," he said.
"When there is a pandemic you will need a major, low-cost
manufacturer, and that is exactly what SII is."
--Denise Roland contributed to this article.
Write to Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 06, 2020 17:06 ET (21:06 GMT)
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