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Jyothi P. Iyer

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Hyderabad Feb. 18 The International Vaccine Institute (IVI), Seoul, said it would transfer technology to Shantha Biotechnics for manufacture of oral cholera vaccine.

This vaccine is likely to hit the market within 2-3 years. Discussing the challenges and solutions on vaccine technologies, Dr Rodney Carbis, Head, Vaccine Development, International Vaccine Institute based in Seoul, South Korea, said phase III of the clinical trials of cholera vaccines were on in Vietnam and Kolkata. This would be over in another 2-3 years.

Typhoid Vaccine

Speaking to Business Line on the sidelines of the ongoing three-day `Bio-Asia-2007' here, Dr Carbis said that a Vietnam-based company had developed the vaccine and IVI tested and improved it and transferred the technology. On the affordability of the vaccine, he said each dose would cost less than $1 in India adding that it was a two-dose oral course. They were lobbying WHO to `pre-qualify' the vaccine.

Alongside, he said that IVI had transferred the technology to another Hyderabad-based company Bharat Biotech International Ltd for the manufacture of typhoid vaccine to be marketed in Pakistan. This single-dose vaccine would cost less than $1 per dose. He said pilot studies for the safety and workability of this vaccine in Pakistan are soon to begin.

IVI is also into some preliminary research work for developing vaccines for other diseases such as Japanese encephalitis, dengue and rotavirus that causes diarrhoea.

The IVI was funded by World Bank, Korean and Swedish Governments among others, Dr Carbis said. The institute was mainly focussing on cholera and typhoid vaccines because these are high impact diseases that could kill people in a short period of time. World over cholera and typhoid are causing one lakh deaths per year and six lakh deaths per year respectively, according to Dr Carbis.

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Seoul institute tech for Shantha Bio to make oral cholera vaccine

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