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Business News/ Companies / News/  Gates Foundation provides Serum Institute $150 million funding for 2 vaccines
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Gates Foundation provides Serum Institute $150 million funding for 2 vaccines

Serum Institute had in June signed a pact to provide a billion doses of the Oxford vaccine to low- and middle-income countries

US Biotechnology company Novavax has entered a supply and license agreement with Serum Institute of India for the development and commercialization of its covid-19 vaccine candidatePremium
US Biotechnology company Novavax has entered a supply and license agreement with Serum Institute of India for the development and commercialization of its covid-19 vaccine candidate

NEW DELHI: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will provide at-risk funding of $150 million to support Serum Institute of India’s manufacturing of two promising vaccines by University of Oxford and Novavax under the condition that the Pune-based firm prices the two vaccines at a maximum of $3 per dose.

Under the agreement, Serum Institute will get the funding from the Gates Foundation through Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, and is part of the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) mechanism for equitable access to vaccines for India and other low and middle income countries.

The collaboration using the foundation’s Strategic Investment Fund, will provide upfront capital to Serum Institute to help them increase manufacturing capacity so that, once a vaccine, or vaccines, gains regulatory approval and World Health Organization’s pre-qualification, up to 100 million doses can be produced at scale for distribution to India and other countries as early as the first half of 2021.

"...to ensure maximum immunization coverage and contain the pandemic, it is important to make sure that the most remote and poorest countries of the world have access to affordable cure and preventive measures. Through this association, we seek to ramp up our constant efforts to save the lives of millions of people from this dreadful disease," Serum Institute chief executive officer Adar Poonawalla said in a statement.

The deal builds on a memorandum of understanding between AstraZeneca and Gavi, announced in June, which will guarantee 300 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate to the wider COVAX Facility, to be supplied upon licensure or pre-qualification.

The Gavi COVAX AMC is currently seeking at least $2 billion in initial seed funding to meet at least part of the cost of procurement for vaccine doses. Last week, the Gavi board agreed the final list of 92 countries that will be supported by the AMC.

Under the collaboration, if the candidates are successful, Univserity of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s jointly developed candidate vaccine will be available to 57 Gavi-eligible countries, which include India, while Novavax’s candidate will be available to all 92 countries supported by the AMC.

Serum Institute had in June signed a pact to provide a billion doses of the Oxford vaccine to low- and middle-income countries, and on Thursday signed a pact with Novovax to produce minimum of 1 billion doses of its candidate vaccine NVX‑CoV2373 for India and other low- and middle-income countries.

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Published: 07 Aug 2020, 02:55 PM IST
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