Corbevax, how much will the patent-free vaccine cost?
The example of Maria Elena Bottazzi, an Italian-Honduran researcher nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for the patent-free vaccine Corbevax. Facts, numbers and predictions
56 years old, born in Genoa but raised in Honduras, where she graduated in science and then continued her studies between Florida and Pennsylvania. It is Maria Elena Bottazzi, the researcher who developed the patent-free protein vaccine, Corbevax, which earned her, together with her colleague Peter Hotez, the nomination for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
Bottazzi has lived in the United States for years where he co-directs the Vaccine Development Center at Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor School of Medicine.
WHO HAS FINANCED CORBEVAX
Bottazzi and Hotez told Scientific American that Corbevax was made "without any support from the US government or the G7, relying almost exclusively on the private philanthropy of entities in Texas, New York and elsewhere."
According to the Washington Post , it was developed for $ 7 million by predominantly private investors, including Austin's Tito's Vodka, which donated $ 1 million in May 2020.
"Our funding is not governmental, but only philanthropic and university, and this has lengthened the time", explained Bottazzi today in an interview with Sole24Ore .
CHEAP TO PRODUCE, EASY TO STORE AND WITHOUT PATENT
Corbevax is a protein-based vaccine and this means that, in addition to having a long history of studies and tests of safety and efficacy behind it because it is a type of vaccine already widely used to prevent many diseases (including pertussis, hepatitis and meningitis , shingles), it is also easy and inexpensive to produce using economies of scale. Furthermore, there are no difficulties in keeping it.
In the trial in India that involved more than 3,000 participants it was shown to be at least 80% effective .
Bottazzi and Hotez called it "the first Covid vaccine designed specifically for global health". Indeed, Corbevax will be patent-free and the technology to make it has already been transferred to vaccine manufacturers in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Botswana.
India, which together with its pharmaceutical company Biological E, is already working on its order of 300 million doses, will later produce an average of 100 million per month to be sent to other countries as well.
"Hotez and Bottazzi – writes the Washington Post – will not earn a cent". Only Baylor College, a private Texas research center that has partnered with Texas Children's Hospital, will receive a fee.
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
According to Indian media, cited by the Washington Post , the price per dose could be around $ 2.50 – which, the newspaper notes, would make Corbevax not only the cheapest Covid vaccine in India but one of the cheapest in the world. world. Hotez, in an interview with NPR , even spoke of 1-1.5 dollars per dose.
“This vaccine – Bottazzi explained to Sole24Ore – costs less than 5 euros per two-dose cycle, that is about a quarter of the most common ones. But, above all, it could make an important contribution to the vaccination of those who do not trust the new generation vaccines, starting with the parents of the children: it is very similar to other vaccines administered for years such as that of hepatitis B ".
INEQUALITIES
About 77% of people in high- and middle-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine and only 10% in low-income countries, writes The Conversation .
Last September, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations agreed that every country in the world must achieve at least 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 and 70% by mid-2022. Total number of vaccines delivered to countries most in need in 2021, Vox recalls, amounts to less than half of Covax's original goal of sending at least 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.
And here Corbevax's intervention could make the difference: “The Indian company Biological E can produce 100 million doses per month,” explained Bottazzi. “There is talk of more than a billion vaccines a year. If we add that the Biofarma company in Indonesia can produce another 100 million a month and that Incepta Pharmaceuticals in Bangladesh can produce another quantity, it becomes an avalanche effect ”.
Potentially Corbevax could, therefore, reach more people than those vaccinated with the doses sent so far by the richest nations.
WHO WILL CORBEVAX GO TO?
"We hope it will be used in low and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the availability of the vaccine has generally been terribly insufficient," added the two researchers who do not rule out getting the green light in North America. and in Europe but, as these are long and expensive processes, they say they "preferred to give priority to countries that have more urgent needs".
Corbevax is proof that making a vaccine without profits is possible and Bottazzi dreams big. The next mission, he reveals to Sole24Ore , is to create a universal vaccine, "also strictly open".
The researcher, in fact, seems to be inspired by Jonas Salk, father of the first polio vaccine in 1953, who when asked 'who owns the patent of his discovery' replied: “Well, I would say it belongs to the people. There is no patent. Can the sun be patented? ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/corbevax-quanto-costera-il-vaccino-libero-da-brevetti/ on Tue, 08 Feb 2022 11:57:33 +0000.