Not a covid19 vaccine, but do you think it could head in another direction.

Rush to Buy Merck’s Covid Pill Risks Leaving Poor Countries Behind

Moves by a small group of countries to acquire supplies of Merck & Co.’s promising Covid pill before it’s even approved are raising concerns that some poorer nations could be left behind in a repeat of the slow and inequitable rollout of vaccines.
A global initiative to deploy Covid therapies like Merck’s molnupiravir is at risk of running into the same problems the Covax effort faced and has no clear mechanism to negotiate contracts and supply countries, according to an independent report commissioned by the World Health Organization.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/lifestyle/cor ... d=msedgdhp

AndyKK wrote: ↑Sat Oct 16, 2021 6:14 am Not a covid19 vaccine, but do you think it could head in another direction.

Rush to Buy Merck’s Covid Pill Risks Leaving Poor Countries Behind

Moves by a small group of countries to acquire supplies of Merck & Co.’s promising Covid pill before it’s even approved are raising concerns that some poorer nations could be left behind in a repeat of the slow and inequitable rollout of vaccines.
A global initiative to deploy Covid therapies like Merck’s molnupiravir is at risk of running into the same problems the Covax effort faced and has no clear mechanism to negotiate contracts and supply countries, according to an independent report commissioned by the World Health Organization.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/lifestyle/cor ... d=msedgdhp

If I remember well , need to be checked, Molnupiravir is like a patented Nicotinamide riboside , slight modifications

Vitamin B3 to be simple

orussey98 wrote:If I remember well , need to be checked, Molnupiravir is like a patented Nicotinamide riboside , slight modifications

Vitamin B3 to be simple

I’ve forgotten most of my pharmacology and biochemistry. But it’s often the ‘slight modifications’ that give drugs their power.

But the production process is complicated, as has it’s story of how it’s getting to where it is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molnupiravir

New agreement to boost vaccine production under Quad partnership for Indo-Pacific in the offing

An agreement on a new vaccine manufacturing facility in Hyderabad to support the Quad’s plan of delivering one billion doses of Covid-19 shots will be signed during an upcoming visit to India by the US development bank’s chief.
US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) chief operating officer David Marchick will travel to South Africa and India during October 18-26 to take forward investments to boost global health and expand Covid-19 vaccine production across the developing world.
Marchick and his delegation will travel to Hyderabad after arriving in India on October 24 to visit Biological E, which has been selected to produce one billion doses of vaccines to be rolled out by the end of 2022 under the vaccine partnership launched by the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad.
The US delegation will “participate in a signing ceremony to open a new facility with substantial capacity for vaccine manufacturing”, according to a statement from the DFC.
“This work is in support of the historic commitment set out by President [Joe] Biden and his counterparts in the Quad – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States,” the statement added.
In South Africa, the DFC delegation will visit Africa Data Centres, which is developing critical technology infrastructure across Africa, and meet pharmaceutical manufacturers critical to the Covid-19 response.

Biden had said at the first in-person Quad leaders’ summit in Washington on September 24 that the vaccine partnership is on track to produce one billion doses in India to boost global supply.
Aid from the DFC is aimed at boosting vaccine manufacturing capacity in several regions of the world. This support is projected to facilitate capacity expansion to produce nearly two billion Covid-19 vaccine doses around the world by the end of 2022.

A joint statement issued at the conclusion of the Quad leaders’ summit last month said additional production will come on line in India later this year due to the Quad vaccine partnership’s financing of increased manufacturing capacity at Biological E.

These doses will be exported to countries in the Indo-Pacific and other parts of the world to overcome a continuing global supply gap. The Quad will coordinate with multilateral initiatives such as the WHO-backed COVAX Facility to procure safe and quality-assured vaccines for low and middle-income countries.

The Quad has also launched a vaccine experts group that is working to align the plans of India, Australia, Japan and the US to support health security and the Covid-19 response across the Indo-Pacific. This includes coordination of efforts to support the production of safe, effective and quality-assured vaccines and equitable access.
The members of the Quad have pledged to donate more than 1.2 billion vaccine doses globally, and they have so far delivered nearly 79 million jabs to countries in the Indo-Pacific.
The Quad summit also welcomed India’s announcement on resuming vaccine exports, which had been halted in March after the country was hit by a devastating second wave of infections. Since vaccine exports resumed recently, India has sent one million doses of Covishield to Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar, and 300,000 doses of Covaxin to Iran.
Japan will help regional partners purchase vaccines through a Covid-19 crisis response emergency support loan of $3.3 billion, and Australia will provide $212 million in grants to purchase vaccines for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Australia will also allocate $219 million to support last-mile vaccine rollouts and lead Quad’s last-mile delivery efforts.
Besides the Covid-19 response and pandemic preparedness, the Quad is also working on infrastructure, resilient supply chains, clean energy, maritime security, approaches to deploy 5G infrastructure that use open and interoperable network architectures, and emerging technologies.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/newsindi ... d=msedgdhp

The history of Covid vaccine development

It has been a year since the UK became the first western country to license a vaccine against Covid and since then the world has embarked on a battle against the virus.

Here is a history of the vaccination development

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Texas scientists’ new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free
Dr Maria Bottazzi says their vaccine, called Corbevax, is unique because they do not intend to patent it
Sat 15 Jan 2022 10.00 GMT

A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.

The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or “the world’s Covid-19 vaccine”.

Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it.

“Pretty much anybody that can make hepatitis B vaccines or has the capacity to produce microbial-based protein like bacteria or yeast, can replicate what we do,” Bottazzi said.

Patent wars over mRNA vaccines have recently heated up. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a dispute over who should get credit for specific discoveries that led to a Covid-19 vaccine which has been delivered to more than 73 million Americans. If Moderna is found to have infringed on the federal government’s patent, it could be forced to pay more than $1bn.

At the same time, activists have called for Pfizer and Moderna to share the technology and knowhow for producing their vaccines, including taking the fight to the World Trade Organization. Low-income countries, which have few vaccine research and production facilities, have vaccinated just one in nine people, according to the World Health Organization. The US has fully vaccinated 67% of the population and provided a third vaccine dose to more than one-third.

Corbevax’s clinical trial data has yet to be released due to resource constraints, but Texas Children’s hospital said the vaccine was over 90% effective against the original Covid-19 strain and over 80% effective against the Delta variant. The vaccine’s efficacy against the Omicron variant is currently being tested.

The process to create the vaccine involves the use of yeast – the same method by which hepatitis B vaccines are produced.

The Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines currently authorized in the US use different technologies, or vaccine “platforms”. Moderna and Pfizer use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. This platform introduces the immune system to Covid-19 by delivering instructions on how to produce its most recognizable feature, the spike proteins which coat its surface. This helps the immune system recognize and fight the virus later, if a person is exposed. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine introduces immune cells to the spike protein through an otherwise harmless cold virus, a technology called viral vector.

The Corbevax vaccine uses a platform called recombinant protein sub-unit technology, which places an actual piece of Covid-19’s spike protein in yeast cells. The yeast cells then copy the vital protein and the protein is introduced to the immune system.

“We make the protein, directly and synthetically, in the lab using the yeast system,” Bottazzi explained. “We ask the yeast to make a protein that looks just like a protein that is made by the virus. Then we immunize the protein and the body then processes this protein and presents it to the immune system. Therefore, you don’t ask your body to do any major manipulation of the coding.”

Crucially, storing the Corbevax vaccine only requires standard refrigeration, unlike the Pfizer vaccine, which requires ultra-cold storage in transit.

Biological E, an Indian pharmaceutical company accustomed to producing hepatitis B vaccines with whom Bottazzi’s team has a longstanding relationship, has already produced 150m doses of the new Corbevax vaccine and will soon be able to produce 100m doses every month.
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... scientists