South Africa establishes a world-class consortium to create the first technology transfer hub for Covid-19 vaccines in Africa

Cape Town | South Africa will play a leading role in the preclinical research phase of Africa’s first messenger RNA (mRNA) Technology Transfer Hub for Covid-19 vaccines.

This follows an announcement made by the World Health Organization (WHO) together with the South African and French governments that South Africa will be the host country for what is set to be the continent’s first Covid-19 vaccine production facility – at a virtual press briefing held on Monday, 21 June 2021.

As part of the bid process, five of our top universities joined forces with the SAMRC, Biovac and Afrigen to create a sustainable technology and knowledge hub including drug makers, and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). As a proof of concept, the consortium aims to bring to clinical trial a Covid-19 vaccine in 12 months. The goal is to manufacture and distribute locally developed vaccines for Africa-specific Covid variants as well as future pathogens threatening the health of people on the continent.

mRNA technology has been used to make vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic and has been hailed by experts as a viable alternative to the traditional vaccine platforms – this, not only because they have been shown to be more effective but also due to their capacity for rapid development, and their potential for low-cost manufacture. Furthermore, the mRNA vaccines were considered some of the most efficacious vaccines for Covid-19.

As South Africa sets up the mRNA production facility,  a team of world class scientists from the Witwatersrand University (Wits), the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZN), University of Stellenbosch (SUN) and the North-West University (NWU), with the Afrigen team,  will strengthen the genomic surveillance for new variants, as well as start the development of novel vaccine candidates for testing. The preclinical research capability – one of the critical elements in the establishment of drug development and a pharmaceutical industry - is already in development as well as the laboratory system to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines. The candidate vaccine will be manufactured at the Afrigen facilities and the full-scale commercial production will be at Biovac.

According to Prof Glenda Gray, SAMRC President and CEO, in response to WHO’s call for the sharing of expertise and technology to boost the manufacturing of vaccines, the organisation has a traceable national footprint and proven leadership role in supporting technology development which may prove to be valuable in this initiative.

“One of the things that South Africa showed the world is that if we work together, we can lead the world in Covid-19 scientific research” says Prof Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform at UKZN. We used the same approach of a consortium to help South Africa to win the bid for the WHO Technology Transfer Hub, he added.

“This announcement is an important first step to establish the mRNA technology in Africa which can allow the continent to leap-frog the vaccine manufacturing gap. It brings together the private sector, research councils as well as academics to harness the collective strengths of this continent,” says Prof Richard Gordon of the SAMRC.

The WHO and Medicine Patent Pool undertook to work with funders and donors to mobilize financial support to establish the hubs and research programs, and to support the transfer of technology to selected manufacturers in LMICs, taking into consideration the need to establish permanent vaccine production capacity in regions where this is currently largely absent. This broader objective will ensure that all WHO regions will be able to produce vaccines as essential preparedness measures against future infectious threats.

Prof Patrick Arbuthnot from the Wits/SAMRC Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit (AGTRU), who will assist in the research and development of self-amplifying mRNA constructs and training, said the initiative will initially prioritize the mRNA-vaccine technology but could expand to other technologies in the future. For several years, work carried out in the Wits/SAMRC AGTRU aimed at advancing gene therapies for viral infections has applied technologies that are now being used to develop anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. This expertise includes generation of engineered adenoviruses and use of mRNA as a therapeutic. Repurposing the technology to counter Covid-19 is now a significant activity of the Unit. “The intention is for these hubs to enable the establishment of production processes at an industrial or semi-industrial level permitting training and provision of all necessary standard operating procedures for production and quality control” he added.

“The SAMRC has various technology development and innovation support mechanisms that are geared towards driving and supporting initiatives such as this mRNA preclinical development and technology transfer hub. Our in-house intellectual property (IP) management expertise within the SAMRC Technology Transfer Office, coupled with substantial experience in managing product development funding programs within the broader Grants, Innovation and Product Development (GIPD) Division, and our global product development partnerships place us in an excellent position to coordinate and support this exciting initiative and to assist in delivering a solution for the continent,” said Dr Michelle Mulder, Executive Director, Grants, Innovation and Product Development Division.

NOTE TO THE EDITOR:

More about the initiative:
The WHO and its partners are working with a South African consortium comprising five research intensive universities in South Africa (UCT, Wits, Stellenbosch, UKZN and NWU) and Biovac, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, a network of universities and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish its first COVID mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub.

The move follows WHO’s global  call for Expression of Interest (EOI) on 16 April 2021 to establish COVID mRNA vaccine technology transfer hubs to scale up production and access to COVID vaccines. Over the coming weeks, the partners will negotiate details with the Government of South Africa and public and private partners inside the country and from around the world.