During the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) opened a center for mRNA vaccine technology in Cape Town to aid developing nations in gaining access to critical vaccines. Afrigen Biologics, a South African biotech company, was selected by the World Health Organization in 2021 for a pilot project to provide low- and middle-income nations with the knowledge and licensing necessary to manufacture COVID vaccines. President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa hailed the event as a watershed moment at the time.
Based on the publicly accessible sequence of Moderna Inc’s mRNA COVID vaccine, Afrigen Biologics has developed and is already expanding manufacturing of its own version of the vaccine, AfriVac 2121. The vaccine candidate is the first to be developed from a widely used vaccination without the help and consent of the creator; it still has to be tested on humans. It is also the first mRNA vaccine to be conceptualized, developed, and manufactured on the African continent at a small-scale laboratory. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on the day the vaccine hub was launched, “I am… here in Cape Town with our partners to support a sustainable model for mRNA technology transfer to give low and middle-income countries equitable access to vaccines and other lifesaving health products.” After multinational pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Pfizer declined to contribute the technological know-how to reproduce their vaccines, the center chose to pursue the vaccine on its own, mostly due to intellectual property issues.
Tedros and other high-ranking health officials will be in the country for five days to discuss the future of the initiative, the science behind mRNA technology, and the possibility of using these tools to tackle other illnesses that disproportionately impact poorer nations, including as HIV and TB. As of March, 70% of the world’s population had gotten at least one dose of a COVID vaccination, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), although that number was remained below 30% in low-income nations.
