The Gates Foundation announced Monday it will invest $40 million in several African drug companies to produce and provide access to mRNA vaccines on the continent.
The foundation, founded in 2000 by Bill Gates and his then-wife, Melinda Gates, said in a release on Monday that the initiative will build on lessons learned from 20 years of working with vaccine manufacturers to “leverage recent scientific advances to develop low-cost, high-quality health tools that reach more people around the world.”
The $40 million investment will advance access to Quantoom Biosciences’ low-cost, mRNA research and manufacturing platform, which was developed with an early-research Grand Challenges grant made to its parent company, Univercells.
What’s mRNA?
Experts see mRNA technology, which was at the centre of COVID-19 vaccine production by Pfizer and Moderna during the coronavirus pandemic, as a potential game-changer for a range of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and Lassa fever, that affect people in poor countries.
The two pioneers of the technology won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.
Vaccines generally train the immune system of the body to recognise and fight infections such as viruses or bacteria.
While traditional vaccine technology uses dead or weakened versions of the original virus or bacterium to do so, mRNA or messenger Ribonucleic Acid vaccines tell the body how to make antibodies.
Who’s getting what?
African-based vaccine manufacturers Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) and Biovac will receive $5 million each in funding from the Gates Foundation, while $10 million will be distributed to other manufacturing companies yet to be identified, according to the statement.
Quantoom Biosciences will receive $20 million from the foundation to ensure low- and middle-income countries “can benefit from the next-generation mRNA health tools.”
“Putting innovative mRNA technology in the hands of researchers and manufacturers in Africa and around the world will help ensure more people benefit from next-generation vaccines,” Nigeria’s health minister and a global expert on vaccines Muhammad Ali Pate said in a statement.
“This collaboration is an encouraging step that will increase access to critical health technologies and help African countries develop vaccines that meet the needs of their people.”
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