ICMR to tie up for Indian Vaccine

ICMR, Bharat Biotech tie up for Indian vaccine

10/05/2020

Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Biotech, Dr. Krishna Ella said in a statement: “We are very proud to participate in this project of national importance with ICMR and NIV. We will do everything to make this program successful in our nation endeavour to combat COVID-19 pandemic.”

Saturday’s announcement is BBIL’s third stated initiative in developing a COVID-19 vaccine. On April 20, the Department of Biotechnology had announced funding support to the company to develop a vaccine candidate utilising the inactivated rabies vector platform. On April 3, the company had said it was working on 'CoroFlu', a one-drop COVID-19 nasal vaccine built on a flu vaccine “backbone” that had proven to be safe in humans. For developing that vaccine, BBIL was part of an international collaboration of virologists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and vaccine company FluGen.

Head of Business Development at Bharat Biotech Raches Ella had then said: “Bharat Biotech will manufacture the vaccine, conduct clinical trials and prepare to produce almost 300 million doses of vaccine for global distribution. Under the collaboration agreement, FluGen will transfer its existing manufacturing processes to Bharat Biotech to enable the company to scale up production and produce the vaccine for clinical trials”.