While the US has restricted export of vaccine ingredients to help its domestic COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, an Indian company is supplying a crucial and rare ingredient required for manufacturing their m-RNA technology based COVID-19 vaccines. It's a lever India could use as a bargaining chip to get US to lift curbs on supplies to Indian vaccine makers from the country.
Using a wartime law, Defence Production Act (DPA), US throttled supplies of key raw materials like bags, filters, vials, glass, cell culture media, plastic tubings, stoppers and some reagents. It directly impacted Indian vaccine makers. US invoked the law to give priority to the production of COVID-19 vaccines and Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for domestic use. It forced US raw material suppliers to restrict supplies in favour of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson's unit Janssen.
Mumbai headquartered pharma and nutraceutical specialty ingredient maker VAV Lifesciences and its subsidiary VAV Lipids, through a deal with a US-based multinational contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), is going to supply highly purified 'synthetic phospholipids' required for vaccine manufacturing. The CDMO is using lipids made by VAV to produce gene-based lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for exclusive use in the COVID-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
"LNP technology is considered a medical breakthrough in vaccine-based delivery systems. It has enabled the development of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines at a blistering pace. We are proud to be the first and only Indian company to produce high-quality phospholipids that have been approved for use in these novel vaccine delivery systems," said Arun Kedia, Managing Director, VAV Lifesciences.
Read More at https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/us-restricts-vaccine-raw-materials-to-india-but-depends-on-rare-ingredient-from-mumbai-firm/story/437257.html
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