There is a Covid-19 vaccine available at a fraction of the cost per dose when compared to the better known versions from Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson, just to name the best known. Two years of pandemic ‘cost’ more than 314 million infections and more than 5.5 million deaths worldwide – with approximately 60% of the world’s population receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. But several experts have pointed to a glaring problem – global and widespread access to vaccines worldwide.
Covid-19 has proved that viruses do not need passports, which has accentuated global inequity – around 72% of vaccine doses were administered in middle- and high-income countries and only 1% in low-income countries. However, the ‘game’ may change with the new Corbevax vaccine, the so-called ‘BBE’ – ‘good, cheap, effective’.
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All Covid-19 vaccines teach the immune system to recognize the virus and prepare the body to mount an attack. However, Corbevax is a protein subunit vaccine, which uses a harmless piece of the coronavirus spike protein in a yeast (a single-celled organism), which then replicates it and presents it to the immune system.
Unlike the three U.S.-approved vaccines — the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna and the viral vector vaccine from Johnson & Johnson — which provide the body with instructions on how to make the spike protein, corbevax delivers the spike protein directly to the body. Like other mRNA vaccines, corbevax also requires two doses.
corbevax was developed by Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi, co-directors of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, who leveraged knowledge developed during the SARS outbreak in 2003. At the time, the researchers created a similar type of vaccine, by inserting the genetic information of a portion of the SARS virus protein into yeast to produce large amounts of the protein. After isolating the spike protein from the yeast virus and adding an adjuvant, which helps trigger an immune response, the vaccine is ready.
Fortunately, the first SARS epidemic was short-lived and there was no need for the vaccine – that was until SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. It was necessary to update the information, dust off the vaccine and update the spike protein to match that of SARS-CoV-2, which made it possible to create the corbevax vaccine.
A large US clinical trial found the vaccine to be safe, well tolerated and over 90% effective in preventing symptomatic infections. The vaccine has received emergency use authorization in India, and other developing countries are expected to follow.
The advantages of corbevax over other mRNA vaccines start in its production: it can be readily produced using well-established recombinant DNA technology, which is relatively inexpensive and quite easy to produce – recombinant technology has been around for 40 years.
This new vaccine can be produced on a much larger scale because appropriate manufacturing facilities already exist, but the key factor for global access is the fact that corbevax can be stored in a common refrigerator – that is, it is possible to produce millions of doses quickly and distribute them with relative ease. In fact, corbevax was developed with global access to the vaccine in mind, seeking to be a low-cost vaccine that is easy to produce and transport.
The responsible researchers were not concerned with intellectual property or financial benefit. The vaccine was produced without significant public funding, meaning the €6.17 million needed to develop the vaccine was provided by philanthropists.
Corbevax is currently licensed off-patent to Biological E. Limited, India’s largest vaccine maker, which plans to manufacture at least 100 million doses per month from February 2022, which will allow low and middle-income populations can locally produce and distribute this vaccine.
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