Indian vaccine development to be backed by PM-CARES

Centre will decide over the next few days how to utilise ₹100 crore from the fund

NEW DELHI: The government has allocated ₹100 crores from the PM-CARES (Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations) Fund to support the initiative to develop a vaccine against coronavirus (Covid-19).There are as many as 25 vaccine development initiatives underway in India, across academic institutions, industry, and start-ups, according to the Department of Biotechnology.

The allocation will be utilised under the supervision of the Principal Scientific Advisor, K VijayRaghavan. “The allocation of ₹100 crores from PM-CARES fund was announced just yesterday; we will take a stand on how to utilise it within next couple of days. But definitely the support will be for a completely indigenous vaccine candidate,” said Dr Renu Swarup, secretary, department of biotechnology, the nodal agency for Covid-19 vaccine development effort in the Prime Minister’s Task Force.

At least 10 vaccine projects are getting support -- both monetary and regulatory – under the DBTBIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council) consortium. It is unclear whether these projects will also be eligible for money from PM-CARES.

“These projects are already receiving support from BIRAC, besides it is too early to say whether this funding will go to any of them. Most of them have international partnerships. Apart from these 10 candidates, there are about fifteen others from different research groups. These are in different stages of development and are currently being evaluated by the committee to see which has come further along and make more sense,” said Dr Swarup.

Thus far, DBT-BIRAC has backed 70 proposals; it accepts applications of a rolling basis. Of these 70 proposals, 10 are vaccine candidates, 34, diagnostics for development or scale-up,10, are therapeutic options, two are drug repurposing proposals, and 14 are preventive interventions.

Some of the vaccine candidates being supported by the consortium include a next-generation mRNA vaccine candidate by Gennova and another by Christian Medical College, Vellore. These vaccines use genetic material of the virus to create immune response. Work on an intra-nasal vaccine by Indian Institute of Chemical Technology is also being supported by it.

Another vaccine candidate selected for funding has been developed by Bharat Biotech, which uses an inactivated rabies virus as the vector or transport of some genetic sequence of SarsCov-2 and produce an immune response.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson of N-BRIC said: “This consortium is of immense national importance at a time of an unprecedented global health emergency. This will enable us to synergise and optimise the latent capabilities we possess across the pyramid of academic research labs, start-ups, MSMEs and large enterprise to deliver innovative solutions at scale for India and the world.”

“To meet our biotech and biomedical needs, the country needs to be self-reliant for product manufacturing and also the components, reagents, resources across the product development chain, N-BRIC brings together academia, industry, start-ups and MSME to serve not just the country but the world,” said Swarup.

C-CAMP is a life sciences incubator supported by DBT. Its mandate is to enable cutting-edge life science research and innovation, and promote entrepreneurship.

We will take a stand on how to utilise it in next couple of days. But the support will be for an indigenous vaccine

RENU SWARUP, Dept of Biotech