US-BASED BCM TIES UP WITH BE FOR VACCINE PRODUCTION

In the race to find a cure for the coronavirus infection, Texas-based Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) has entered into a licensing agreement with Indian pharmaceutical company Biological E Limited (BE) for the development of a safe, effective and affordable vaccine.

According to BCM, Hyderabad- headquartered BE has licenced the recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed at Baylor.

The company engaged in licence negotiations with the BCM Ventures team after initial discussions on Baylor's technology and how it could possibly work on a vaccine to address the current global pandemic.

The company will leverage its past experience for the further development and commercialisation of the vaccine candidate, which is currently produced using a proven yeast-based expression technology, the Texasbased BCM said.

At a webinar organised by the Consul General of India in Houston, Dr Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor, saids he and his colleagues have already been making SARs and MERS vaccines.

"Then, when we got word about Covid-19, we saw that the sequence for the new virus was similar to some of the viruses that we were already making vaccines for," said Hotez.

Hotez and his team were able to quickly move on to creating a Covid-19 vaccine, which resulted in the collaboration with a large vaccine producer in India.