Fresh CEPI call to speed up Covid vaccine development and production

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has made a fresh “call for proposals” inviting organisations to apply for funding to speed up the development and production of Covid-19 vaccine candidates.

While there are already about 100 vaccine projects in the pipeline, the latest call by CEPI is to bring into the fold any vaccine candidate that may have been missed in previous efforts. The move would also help expand the geographical footprint for the production scale-up of Covid vaccine candidates, CEPI said.

Such a move is necessary to address access issues, as countries increasingly show a sense of “vaccine nationalism”, where companies are expected to service the region they are located in, rather than address the region that needed the product the most, says a healthcare expert.

Presently, about six Indian companies are in the fray to develop vaccines against the novel coronavirus, including Zydus Cadila, Serum Institute, Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, Mynvax and Bharat Biotech.

Global deployment

CEPI is a global alliance financing and coordinating the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases. Its call for proposals is open up to June 30, with applications reviewed on a rolling basis every two weeks. Applicants will be required to demonstrate both their ability to rapidly develop their vaccine candidate, as well as manufacture it at scale, it said.

The support will be provided for the rapid development of vaccines that could be available for licensure in 12-18 months or less, and increase the availability of vaccines for wide-spread global deployment, CEPI said.

This comes even as companies, academic institutions and experts from across the world put out different timelines on a possible vaccine, ranging from as early as September to the possibility of no vaccine at all.

However, CEPI said, billions of doses of vaccine are needed as soon as possible to bring the pandemic to an end, and hence the emphasis on vaccine manufacturing capacity and capabilities to deliver global development plans.

This is CEPI’s third such call since January and the Covid vaccine portfolio under development comprises nine promising candidates, three of which were already in clinical testing, it said.

These vaccine acceleration efforts come even as 40 countries came together recently through the COVID-19 Global Response International Pledging Event, hosted by the European Commission, to pledge about €7.4 billion for research and development for vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).