70% of COVID mRNA vaccine doses have gone to the richest countries, so South African scientists are copying Moderna’s COVID vaccine
Credit: Afrigen Biologics
Many steps remain before Afrigen’s mRNA vaccine candidate can be distributed to people in Africa and beyond, and it definitely won’t help to curb the pandemic this year. But the WHO hopes that the process of creating it will lay the foundation for a more globally distributed mRNA-vaccine industry. Patrick Arbuthnot, director of gene-therapy research at the University of the Witwatersrand, says, “We were not intimidated, because mRNA synthesis is a fairly generic procedure.” Despite delays in the shipment of raw materials, the team completed this process in ten weeks and sent vials of mRNA to Afrigen in early December.
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