The Global List/Ep 2/The Vaccine Innovators

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. So, how do you create your own COVID vaccine when you don’t have access to the intellectual property? In this episode of The Global List, we head to Cape Town, South Africa, to speak with Dr. Petro Terblanche, the Managing Director of Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, which made history by creating the first African COVID vaccine based on the publicly available sequence sequence of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine. Find out how Afrigen fused innovation, science and technology to forge this breakthrough and what’s next. You can always access The Global List via your favorite podcast streaming platform e.g. Spotify, Apple, Audible, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Castbox etc or via Libsyn. Click below.

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NOTE: Since recording the episode, Afrigen has gone on to set a number of key milestones including the following:

• Afrigen has signed two bilateral technology agreements to improve on the 1st generation technology (improved process efficiency to lower COGS and formulation with novel lipids to produce improved thermostability of 4 to 8 degrees C) and agreements to develop a pipeline of mRNA vaccines relevant for the burden of diseases in LMICs). These partnerships are with Quantoom and eTheRNA two Biotech companies in Belgium and the NIH Vaccine Research Center (VRC)

• Fifteen (15) spokes to the mRNA Hub have been approved and will receive technology from the mR:NA Hub at Afrigen.

• Training and capacity building for spokes have commenced.

• The mRNA Covid19 vaccine candidate has started pre-clinical studies and shows very promising results for immunogenicity and neutralizing antibody responses.

• The scale-up of the lab scale process has started and preparation for GMP production is underway.

• The design of the clinical protocols has started and Afrigen is also engaged in consultations with the regulator.