Safety highest priority while developing adult Covid vaccination: Dr Krishna Ella
Hyderabad: When Bharat Biotech was looking at developing vaccines after the Covid outbreak, the highest priority was ensuring the safety in adult vaccination, Dr Krishna Ella, managing director, Bharat Biotech International noted on Thursday.
Speaking at a panel session on the first day of BioAsia titled ‘Two years into the pandemic – Challenges, successes and what next?’, Dr Ella said, “I looked at only one thing – safety in adult vaccination. I looked at our expertise in viral vaccination. And we are extremely good in viral and inactivated vaccines as well as vero cell culture. And we have seven vaccines in inactivated vaccines category. We are one of the very few people in the world who have expertise in inactivated vaccine strategy domain. And the vero cell culture – we are Number 1 with 13 vaccines platform. We wanted to pool in what we are good at.”
“We took help of ViroVax in US for adjuvants, and we scaled up with IICT in Hyderabad. We also needed public private partnership because as private companies we cannot do studies on monkeys in India. National Institute of Virology in Pune has got that expertise. We used the facility to prove that it works on animals,” he added.
Efficacy trial was important. Also, the regulatory was a bit delayed in the beginning in India. If that was a little activated, the mRNA vaccine could shift before the animal trial, and the company could shift straight to human trial. Bharat Biotech was the only company doing an efficacy trial during a delta epidemic.
Dr Ella further informed, “We have done a detailed analysis on nasal vaccines. In the next one week, we are releasing a public statement on tuberculosis such as a partnership on a phase 3 trial. Tuberculosis elimination is on the Prime Minister’s agenda for 2025.”
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