South African scientists copy Moderna’s COVID vaccine [3 fév. 2022]
▻https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00293-2
When the #WHO launched its mRNA tech-transfer hub in #South_Africa last June, it asked #Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech to help teach researchers in low- and middle-income countries how to make their #COVID-19 #vaccines. But the companies did not respond, and the WHO decided to go ahead without their help. Friede says the WHO chose to replicate Moderna’s shot because more information on its development is available publicly, compared with Pfizer–BioNTech’s vaccine, and because Moderna has vowed not to enforce its patents during the pandemic. Moderna did not respond to requests from Nature to comment on the WHO’s decision to copy its vaccine.
With funds from countries including France, Germany and Belgium, South African researchers began chipping away at the project in late September. A team at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg took the lead on the first step: making a DNA molecule that would serve as a template to synthesize the mRNA. Although Moderna has controversially patented this sequence, researchers at Stanford University in California deposited it in the online database Virological.org in March last year.
Patrick Arbuthnot, director of gene-therapy research at the University of the Witwatersrand, says, “We were not intimidated, because mRNA synthesis is a fairly generic procedure.” Despite delays in the shipment of raw materials, the team completed this process in ten weeks and sent vials of mRNA to Afrigen in early December.
During this period, having heard about plans to mimic Moderna’s shot, scientists from around the world e-mailed Afrigen researchers to offer assistance. Some of them were at the US National Institutes of Health, and had conducted foundational work on mRNA vaccines. “It was extraordinary,” says Petro Terblanche, Afrigen’s managing director. “I think a lot of scientists were disillusioned with what had happened with vaccine distribution, and they wanted to help get the world out of this dilemma.”
[...] The next set of challenges will be to make a lot more of the vaccine. Jason McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin whose work was foundational to the development of several COVID-19 vaccines, says he is not surprised that South African researchers seem to have copied Moderna’s vaccine, but he adds that scaling up production of that original shot required a lot of extra innovation by manufacturers.
For the next phase of the project, several companies in the global south will learn from Afrigen and attempt to create batches of vaccine themselves, in preparation for testing the shots in rodents. The WHO expects a Moderna mimic to be ready for phase I trials in people by the end of November.