india

Updated: Apr 21, 2020 10:28 IST

The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (Birac) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) announced on Monday that they have selected 16 projects -- spanning vaccines, drugs and technologies -- for funding under the Covid-19 research consortium.

The selected projects will get funding support on a case-by-case basis and assistance in navigating the regulatory environment.

Among the research projects selected are those involving the development of two novel vaccines by two of India’s leading vaccine and pharmaceutical manufacturers – Cadila Healthcare and Bharat Biotech. Both are in the preclinical stage.

Internationally, at least three vaccine candidates have entered human trials and 67 others are in preclinical stages.

The vaccine by Cadila that has been selected by Birac uses recombinant DNA technology. The company has also been working on another vaccine candidate that uses reverse genetic technology to create a virus with weakened potency but similar to the Sars-Cov-2 strain to produce an immune response.

The other vaccine candidate selected for funding has been developed by Bharat Biotech; it uses an inactivated rabies virus as the vector or transport of a genetic sequence of Sars-Cov-2 so as to produce an immune response.

Bharat Biotech has also been working on another vaccine that uses the nasal flu vaccine backbone to deliver genetic material of the virus to produce immune response.

Apart from the novel vaccines against Covid-19, Birac will also support the efforts of Serum Institute of India to conduct phase III trials in humans of a vaccine originally intended for tuberculosis, developed by the Berlin-based Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.

“The consortium will provide financial support to the projects, but apart from that we will also support them in any way they want, be it jumping through regulatory hoops, helping in sourcing raw materials and imports, or connecting them to others in the industry,” Dr Renu Swarup, secretary of the department of biotechnology and chairperson of Birac, said on Monday.

Apart from supporting the vaccine candidates, Birac has also brought in the National Institute of Immunology to develop a framework for evaluating the vaccines.

“All vaccine candidates that are being developed need to be evaluated in the pre-clinical stages and the NII will help in understanding the need of the manufacturers and developing various models for the same,” said Dr Swarup.

DBT is the nodal department for all Covid-19 vaccine development effort in the PM’s task force.

Another project selected is that of the Hyderabad-based OncoSeek Bio Pvt Ltd, which will develop a lung organoid model in the lab to test drugs, therapeutics, and vaccines.

“We create cell culture models of various diseases -- we call it creating a disease in the dish. For the Covid-19 project we will use lung cells that can be infected and then used to study the drugs and vaccines. This can replace animal models for preclinical testing,” said Suresh Poosala, founder and CEO of the company.

Among therapies, the consortium has selected Virchow Biotech Pvt Ltd for commercial scale production of purified immunoglobulin or virus-fighting antibodies from people who have recovered from Covid-19.

The consortium has also selected seven rapid and RT-PCR based diagnostic tests. The manufacturing of these will be supported at Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ), which will also help in scaling up ventilator technologies.

“The DBT-BIRAC research consortium is an excellent way to bring together researchers and industry towards priority research and biotechnological solutions,” said Dr Anurag Agarwal, director Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and one of the members of the science and tech group set up by the principal scientific adviser (PSA) .