Afrigen creates COVID vaccine using Moderna data
Afrigen Biologics has used the publicly available information relating to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to manufacture its own version of the treatment, which could see testing by the end of this year.
While Moderna refused to share its recipe, citing IP concerns, Afrigen used this data and help from advisers to create its own vaccine candidate.
The candidate represents the first vaccine to be made without the assistance and approval of the original developer.
The vaccine was made possible through the World Health Organisations’ (WHO) pilot project to give poor and low-middle income countries knowledge of how to make COVID vaccines after major manufacturers, including Moderna, declined to share the technology.
Moderna’s vaccine was chosen by WHO as a candidate due to the large amount of public information available on the drug, as well as its pledge not to enforce patents during the pandemic.
"We haven't copied Moderna, we've developed our own processes because Moderna didn't give us any technology," Petro Terblanche, managing director at Afrigen, told Reuters.
"We started with the Moderna sequence because that gives, in our view, the best starting material. But this is not Moderna’s vaccine, it is the Afrigen mRNA hub vaccine,” he added.
To share or not
Pressure has mounted on the major COVID-19 vaccine developers to waive IP related to their vaccines and share technology, data, and expertise on how to create generics with low and middle income countries in order to boost global immunity to the virus.
This month, the humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) called for the South African government to revocate COVID-19 related patents granted to Eli Lilly and Moderna.
In a statement made last week, MSF urged the government to revoke the patents and reform the country’s “outdated patent law that leads to the proliferation of unmerited monopolies”.
According to MSF, local production of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines may have been adversely affected by South Africa granting Moderna at least three patents related to mRNA vaccines.
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