What should be vaccine makers’ plan

A South African biotech company has recreated small quantities of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. Its achievement, done in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), is part of a broader plan to help low- and middle-income countries become less reliant on US and European drug makers, which have been slow to send their vaccines.
The WHO is investing $100 million over five years to develop an mRNA hub in South Africa, with expertise centred at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines. Afrigen is expected to share the know-how it develops with other countries eager to establish their own vaccine infrastructure. Brazil and Argentina are next in line.
This ambitious plan could set up countries to better respond to future pandemics — as well as ongoing scourges such as malaria and tuberculosis. It’s also exactly the kind of program that might lose steam once the Covid threat becomes less acute and global attention shifts elsewhere.
To make sure this momentum doesn’t fizzle, companies like Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech should pitch in now by sharing their
vaccine-making expertise. Afrigen’s goal is to design and, with the Biovac Institute (another partner in the WHO’s network), manufacture a new vaccine. Much has been made about the Moderna copy, but the South African scientists want to create their own intellectual property.
Their original intent had been to license IP from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech. In October, when WHO said it had hired Afrigen to cook up the Moderna vaccine recipe, the global health agency sounded confident that the companies would grant access to their technologies. Only after attempts to engage them went nowhere did the group change their strategy to developing a separate vaccine.
Ideally the shot that Afrigen ultimately creates will be an mRNA vaccine that is relatively easy and cheap to produce, and is stable at room — or at least fridge — temperature so that it’s practical in places with patchy cold-chain
distribution.

—Bloomberg