A South African biotechnology company has managed to decipher the formula of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine. That is an important first step to produce a cheap corona vaccine in Africa itself, in order to narrow the gap with rich Western countries.
The large pharmaceutical companies that produce the corona vaccines so far have not released their patents on the vaccines. As a result, their formula is not available for other companies to make the vaccine themselves. Africa - where only a small minority of people have been fully vaccinated - thus depends on Western pharmaceutical giants.
"A hub of biotech companies in South Africa had first asked Moderna to share the technology. That could cut the time to come up with a vaccine by two years. But since all the big pharmaceutical companies don't want to release their patents, the The World Health Organization decides to throw in a hundred million dollars at the hub, part of that amount comes from Belgium, by the way," says VRT-Africa journalist Stijn Vercruysse.
That South African hub was able to crack Moderna's code faster than expected. "They did that with reverse engineering . Undressing the vaccine, producing it from back to front in order to know how to make it," explains Stijn Vercruysse. "It took them six months to do this. There is therefore a lot of potential for great scientists there. Various biotech companies and universities have combined their knowledge."
That does not mean that a corona vaccine can be produced very quickly in Africa. "We still have to pay attention. It's the Moderna vaccine that's being cracked here because Moderna has always said they wouldn't challenge a copy during the pandemic. But will the company do what they said? It will probably take until 2024 before a vaccine really rolls off the production line," said Vercruysse.
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