The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $40 million to support the expansion of access to mRNA vaccines for safeguarding against various diseases in Africa.
The announcement comes just at the of the foundation’s yearly three-day Grand Challenges gathering, which unites scientists and public health researchers from across the globe.
A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation shared this insight ahead of an announcement made during the 2023 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Dakar on Monday.
Beneficiaries of the donation
Quantoom Biosciences, headquartered in Nivelles, Belgium, will receive $20 million to advance its mRNA manufacturing platform.
Additionally, the Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal and Biovac in South Africa will each receive $5 million to acquire this technology.
An additional $10 million is earmarked for other vaccine manufacturers interested in utilizing this platform.
Backstory
mRNA vaccines brought about a groundbreaking transformation in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the accessibility of these vaccines was greatly unequal. In response, various initiatives have been established to address this disparity and leverage the potential of this new technology to combat existing threats that disproportionately impact lower-income countries, such as malaria and tuberculosis.
What you should know
In April of this year, the World Health Organization inaugurated its mRNA vaccine technology hub in Cape Town.
Among its members, Afrigen Biologics stands out for having successfully developed Africa’s inaugural mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 in a laboratory setting.
Despite these advancements, the production of mRNA vaccines remains cost-prohibitive, especially when considering the scale required for testing and deploying safe and effective vaccines.
Quantoom’s platform, known as Intensify, offers a more cost-effective and efficient means of producing mRNA batches at a larger scale.
- “This marks a significant and essential stride toward achieving vaccine self-reliance in the region,” stated Dr Amadou Sall, CEO of the Institut Pasteur de Dakar.
More Insights
Intensify was created with financial support from the Gates Foundation, which was provided to Quantoom’s parent company, Univercells, in 2016.
Afrigen has already adopted this platform for various purposes, including the development of vaccines for Rift Valley fever and gonorrhoea.
Both Gates and Afrigen have asserted that this platform could potentially reduce vaccine development costs by 50% when compared to traditional mRNA technology.
- “The primary goal of the second generation of mRNA technology is to significantly lower production costs,” explained Petro Terblanche, Afrigen’s CEO, during a phone call from Dakar on Sunday.
