(Bloomberg) – The call comes early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Drew Weissman, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in messenger RNA, received a question from a Chinese company interested in using the new technology to make a vaccine against the coronavirus .mRNA, which effectively turns the body’s cells into small ones. Vaccine factories have since become the breakthrough of the Covid era, giving the shots of Moderna Inc. and support the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech SE partnership, which is most effective in fighting the disease. Before Covid struck, experimental science had yet to approve its use against any disease, let alone the mysterious respiratory infection.
“They wanted to develop my technology in their business in China,” said Weissman, a leader in the field, because of his work with research partner Katalin Karikó to discover the potential disease control of mRNA. “I told them I was interested.”
Then nothing happened.
“I never heard from them again,” Weissman said.
It was one of the missed opportunities that harmed the country’s Covid vaccine and caused Chinese companies to catch up on a technological series to change everything from flu shots to oncological drugs.
While the coronavirus spread worldwide last year, Pfizer rushed to New York to partner with German BioNTech, an mRNA precursor that appointed Kariko as senior vice president. The Massachusetts-based Moderna has meanwhile funded $ 2.5 billion to the US government.
China Setback
In contrast, several Chinese companies have focused on older technologies that have proved much less powerful. At a conference on April 10, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, George Fu Gao, said that Chinese vaccines “do not have very high protection rates”, local media reported.
As the comments on social media caused a stir, Gao returned, saying that the Communist Party-backed Global Times newspaper was only referring to ways to improve vaccine effectiveness. No damage limitation can obscure the fact that no Made-in-China mRNA vaccines have been approved yet.
Read more: Are China’s Covid Shots less effective? Experts enlarge Sinovac
This is a setback for President Xi Jinping’s quest to make the country a powerhouse for healthcare innovation. The effectiveness of mRNA with Covid vaccines offers a new frontier for the technology, with researchers exploring ways to use it to fight cancer, tuberculosis and many other diseases, according to Surbhi Gupta, a health and life sciences analyst with advice Frost & Sullivan.
“MRNA technology could be a game changer,” she said. For decades, vaccines have been made with inactive versions of viruses, but mRNA shots use genetic material to instruct the body to create the protein that the coronavirus uses to enter cells. . This in turn trains the body to fight potential infections.
Old-school Covid vaccines manufactured by Chinese are now used by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and China National Biotec Group Co., are dependent on particles of inactivated viruses and have lower protection than the mRNA vaccines that are more than 90% effective in preventing infections.
According to studies done in Brazil, Sinovac’s vaccine has protected a slight rate of just over 50% against symptomatic Covid-19, which only meets the minimum threshold required by global drug regulators.
The state-run China National Biotec, a unit of Sinopharm Group Co., said its two inactivated vaccines were 73% and 79% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid, but did not publish data to support the claim. Sinopharm’s shares listed in Hong Kong jumped on Thursday, a day after the company said there were no serious side effects associated with the vaccines for inactivated viruses. Meanwhile, the Chinese CanSino Biologics Inc. produced a virus-vector vaccine that, like those made by AstraZeneca Plcs and Johnson & Johnson, uses a genetically modified virus to fight infection. The Tianjin-based company reported a 66% efficacy in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in its final phase trial.
A new generation of vaccines is coming, some without needles
The Chinese government has aggressively insisted on narrowing the gap with the West and becoming an alternative pharmaceutical and biotechnological power. It has allowed controversial stem cell treatments and gene therapy, despite concerns elsewhere about safety and efficacy. Yet China has not made mRNA vaccines a priority.
“Before Covid, many people still had reservations” about the technology, said Lusong Luo, senior vice president of BeiGene Ltd., a biotech pioneer in Beijing and a leading producer of medicines for oncology. “It’s new, it’s at the forefront.”
When Sinovac started working on a vaccine, it focused on a well-known method of developing a shot quickly, after attempts to explore other alternatives did not yield promising results.
“For us, the strategy is to use the more mature platform and technology to solve the problem,” CEO Yin Weidong said in an interview with Bloomberg News last May.
Now, with the success that Pfizer and Moderna have seen, Chinese companies are jumping into the fray – but it will take time to bear fruit. According to Feng Duojia, president of the Chinese Vaccine Association, China may only have mRNA vaccines until the end of 2021, China Global Television Network reported on April 11.
Read more: China’s effort to lift vaccines hampered by supply shortages
BeiGene announced an agreement in January to partner with Strand Therapeutics Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts on a crop mRNA treatment. “Now people realize that mRNA vaccines really work, it’s going to be a lot easier,” Luo said.
China’s Walvax Biotechnology Co. began building a facility to make mRNA vaccines in December, while CanSino signed an agreement with Precision NanoSystems Inc. in May last year. in Vancouver to develop an mRNA vaccine. The contract manufacturer WuXi Biologics Cayman Inc. said he spent more than $ 100 million on mRNA-related vaccines, discovery, development and manufacturing of biological agents.
Although China largely contains the spread of the coronavirus within its borders, more effective vaccinations and a larger increase among the population will enable the country to reopen sooner, reducing the need for quarantines and closures. China could lose the lead by eliminating the virus if its vaccination is less effective than places where mRNA shots are the backbone of rolling out. In Israel, where nearly 60% of the population has received the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining. As more adults get their shots in the U.S., which also relies primarily on mRNA vaccines, President Joe Biden predicted that Americans will once again celebrate July 4 with roast beef in the backyard.
The best and worst places to be when global vaccinations rise
China is not the only country that has missed the boat with mRNA. While companies in Japan, India and Australia play key players in fighting diseases such as flu and polio, no company in the Asia-Pacific is now making mRNA shots. “Essentially, mRNA has been put in the ‘too hard’ basket for years,” said Nigel McMillan, program director for infectious diseases and immunology at Griffith University in Southport, Australia.
In March this year, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Moderna’s local partner for Japanese trials with its Covid vaccine, signed an agreement with New Jersey – based Anima Biotech on mRNA treatments for Huntington’s and other neurological diseases. Another major Japanese drugmaker, Daiichi Sankyo Co., announced on March 22 the start of early stages of its own mRNA Covid vaccine.
In Thailand, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok enlisted Penn’s mRNA pioneer Weissman to help him develop mRNA capabilities.
While trying to catch up, Chinese developers and others in Asia could take advantage of the lower barriers to access to the development of mRNA vaccine and medicine. In addition to market leaders Moderna and BioNTech, there are other Western startups that have invested in mRNA and are ready to license their technology.
Making mRNA vaccines and drugs also does not require large capital expenditures on expensive bioreactors and other equipment, said Archa Fox, associate professor at the University of Western Australia’s School of Humanities and the School of Molecular Sciences.
According to Weissman, it is good for China’s ability to recover if it does not focus on mRNA earlier.
“They’re going to hire the best scientists they can get,” he said. “Anyone can take part in the game if they have good people and money.”
(Updates with added details)
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