America’s Novavax strives COVID-19 vaccine deal from India’s Serum Institute!
A COVID-19 vaccine was developed by an American biotech company Novavax and now SII i.e. Serum Institute of India is set to source the same. With Adar Poonawalla leading the SII company, the company has achieved to indulge in the process to bring Oxford and AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1 vaccine in the nation. Now the company has signed a deal that will permit to locally manufacture and commercialize Novavax’s shot when it is ready and has proved its effectivity.
Novavax announced in a recent filing with the US Securities & Exchange Commission about its entrance “supply and license agreement” with the Serum Institute of India. As per this deal, Novavax will give the Indian organization exclusive and non-exclusive licenses for the development, co-formulation, filling and finishing, registration, and commercialization of its NVX-CoV2373 vaccine candidate for the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Serum Institute of India will be sourcing 2 key components from Novavax to begin the manufacturing process of the antigen drug substance named NVX-CoV2373 and Matrix-M adjuvant. It is also said that both the parties will equally share the revenue generated after it starts selling the shots in India.
Serum Institute of India has received exclusive rights from Novavax for its coronavirus vaccine in India during the fifteen-year term of the deal. With exclusive rights comes the non-exclusive ones as well. So the non-exclusive right includes in all the countries in this pandemic era except for those who have been recognized as upper-middle/high-income countries by the World Bank. The company has retained the right for the vaccine to every rich country across the globe.
The effectiveness of the vaccine…
After the announcement of promising results of Phase I trial of the coronavirus vaccine, the deal between Novavax and SII was struck on the 30th of July. The questionable shot was able to induce a high level of neutralizing antibodies in all one hundred and thirty-one of the participants volunteered for the study, without showcasing any major side effects.
The Novavax developed vaccine has proven to be stable and contains a prefusion protein that sends harmless copies of the coronavirus spike protein in the sufferer’s body so that it can train their immune system to fight against the actual infection when necessary. As per the Associated Press, the scientists of the company have extracted the actual spike protein, then purified it, and lastly packaged it into virus-sized nanoparticles for the creation of the delivery shot.
The US government has been backed the NVX-CoV2373 vaccine which is in its Phase II of human trials. It is expected to enter into a larger Phase III by the end of September month. Its availability is expected by the end of this year. It can also be expected that it will produce one billion to two billion (i.e. 100 crores to 200 crores) doses of the vaccine by the year 2021.
The DCGI i.e. Drug Control General of India approved the Serum Institute of India for the conduction of Phase II and Phase III human clinical trials of the COVID 19 vaccine candidate which is developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm named AstraZeneca. SII is the world’s largest vaccine maker company in terms of its capacity for production and marketing globally and now the company has partnered with AstraZeneca for the mass production of the Oxford vaccine.
As the world is witnessing a crazy rise in the new cases of COVID-19, researchers all across the globe are racing for bringing out a vaccine for the same. The deadly virus has infected over 1.87 crore people globally and claimed 7,06,041 lives.
