A missed opportunity saw China lag behind on covalent vaccines

Photographer: Alex Kraus / 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 on messenger RNA, received a query from a Chinese company interested in using the new technology to make a vaccine against the coronavirus .

mRNA, which makes the body cells effective in small vaccine factories, has since become the breakthrough star of the Covid era, giving the shots of Moderna Inc. and the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech SE partnership which is one of the 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 on the discovery of mRNA’s disease control potential. “I told them I was interested.”

Then nothing happened.

“I never heard from them again,” Weissman said.

It was a missed opportunity that hurt the country’s Covid vaccine push and left Chinese companies catching up with a technological range to change everything from flu shots to oncology drugs.

As the coronavirus spread worldwide last year, Pfizer rushed to New York to partner with Germany BioNTech, a forerunner of mRNA 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 was 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 made headlines on social media, Gao returned and the Global Times newspaper, backed by the Communist Party, said it 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 for more information: Are China’s Covid Shots Less Effective? Experts enlarge Sinovac

This is a setback for President Xi Jinping’s ambition to make the country a better character. health care innovation power station. The efficacy of mRNA with Covid vaccines offers a new frontier for the technology, and researchers are looking at ways to use it to fight cancer, tuberculosis and many other diseases, according to Surbhi Gupta, a health care and life science analyst at Frost & Sullivan Advice.

“MRNA technology could be the game changer,” she said.

For decades, vaccines have been made using 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 China are now being used from Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and China National Biotec Group Co. relies on particles of inactivated viruses and has a much lower protection rate than the mRNA vaccines which is 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. China National Biotec, a unit of Sinopharm Group Co., said its two inactivated vaccines are 73% and 79% effective in preventing Covid symptomatically, but did not publish data to support the claim.

Meanwhile, China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. produced a virus-vector vaccine that, like those of 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 closing the gap with the West and becoming an alternative pharmaceutical and biotechnological power. It has controversial treatments with stem cells 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.”

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. China may not have mRNA vaccines before the end of 2021, according to Feng Duojia, president of the China Association of Vaccines, China Global Television Network reported on April 11.

Read for more information: China’s bid to lift vaccinations hampered by shortage of supplies

BeiGene has a January agreement 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. Contractor WuXi Biologics Cayman Inc. said they spend more than $ 100 million on mRNA-related vaccines, discovering, developing and manufacturing biologicals.

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 eradicating 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, is plaguing Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths. As more adults get their shots in the US, which also relies heavily on mRNA vaccines, President Joe Biden predicted that Americans will be celebrate July 4th again with braai in the backyard.

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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. “Basically, mRNA has been put in the ‘too hard’ basket for years,” he 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, has 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.