Indian pharma gearing up for Covid vaccine market

At present, the Indian Pharma Industry is among the largest makers of generic drugs and accounts for nearly half of the vaccines produced globally

Sensing big business opportunities in the manufacture of potential vaccines against Covid-19, Indian Pharma majors are moving swiftly into the sector.

It's clearly a multi-billion-dollar market as well as a demand for producing tens and billions of doses of the vaccine or basket of vaccines in the short-term. Vaccine is the most definite hope of ending the Pandemic, which has impacted virtually all nations, unlike the 1918 Pandemic, which was restricted in geography, but saw huge mortality.

Early entrants in India are Zydus Cadila, Dr Reddy's, Aurobindo Pharma and Strides Science Pharma as of now. While the Ahmedabad-based Zydus is developing a vaccine ZyCoV-D and scaling up manufacturing, Hyderabad-headquartered Dr Reddy's has tied up to test and distribute Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine for the present.

Aurobindo Pharma, another Hyderabad-based major, has its wholly-owned entity called Auro Vaccines, based in the US, which is into development of potential Covid-19 vaccines. In addition, the company announced a broad tie up with CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) too. Accordingly, it will work with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), Chandigarh, and the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Kolkata, and undertake clinical development and commercialisation.

Strides Pharma has announced $40 million investment into a new vaccine manufacturing facility in Bengaluru. Its strategy is to forge arrangements for contract manufacturing of the vaccines and marketing them.

The biggest lure for Pharma Industry is to develop and produce vaccines for the entire global population estimated to be 7.7 billion. If the prescribed dosage is two shots, the quantity doubles. Therefore, there is space for many manufacturers, requirement of a massive supply chain and ancillary industry to deliver it in the form of syringes, vials, packaging, etc., says Rao Vadlamudi, a pharma industry veteran and president, Commonwealth Pharmacists' Association.

India Advantage:

India is uniquely placed and in the words of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, who is now driving the global healthcare through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Indian Pharmaceutical industry will not only produce the Covid-19 vaccine for the country, but also for the world, he feels.

At present, the Indian pharma industry is among the largest makers of generic drugs and accounts for nearly half of the vaccines produced globally.

Serum Institute of India (SII), Pune, is the world's largest producer of vaccines with a capacity of 1.2 billion doses per year. There are more than half-a-dozen other pure vaccine producers like Bharat Biotech, Biological E, Indian Immunologicals, Panacea Biotech, Sanofi Shantha Biotech, etc., making vaccines for Polio, Pneumonia, Rota virus, Meningitis, BCG and Measles.

The Way Forward

Some Pharma experts see the Covid-19 vaccine as a potential recurring-demand type like the Flu vaccine, which implies a long-term need and a sustainable business generator. Along with the vaccine, the entire ancillary medical devices market to administer it too will get a shot in the arm.

The Hyderabad-headquartered, $2.4-billion drug maker Dr Reddy's surprised many by announcing a tie up in August with the RIDF, Russia to do large scale testing and later distribute Sputnik V. Interestingly, Russia was a strong market for Dr Reddy's, especially in its growth and take off stages.

Recently, the company confirmed that the Sputnik V doses started arriving and phase 2/3 trials will be taken up shortly. As per the present agreement, the RDIF will supply 100 million doses to Dr Reddy's.

Sputnik V has been developed by the Gamaleya, National Research Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology and the RDIF. Claimed to be 92 per cent effective, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin has been quoted as saying that the vaccine could be produced in India and China. He also called for an alliance of the BRICS nations to set up a Centre.

BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) accounts for a population of 3.6 billion.

Zydus Cadila, the Ahmedabad-based major has adopted a two-pronged approach for the development of a vaccine, which includes a DNA-based vaccine and secondly a live attenuated recombinant vaccine to combat the virus.

Since the outbreak of the Pandemic in early 2020 nearly 140-150 potential vaccine candidates have been identified. Of these around 40-45 are in various stages of trials, and about a half-a- dozen of them have entered the final, Phase-3 human trials. In recent days, Pfizer- BioNTech; Moderna-NIAID, US have announced 95 per cent and 94.5 per cent efficacy in limited size data. Similarly, the Oxford-Astra Zeneca-SII vaccine is on target for an early 2021 launch.

The indigenously developed Covaxin of Bharat Biotech and the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Zydus Cadila is promising to finish all trials and hopefully be ready by mid-2021. A few more are also in the pipeline.

The Indian Pharma, which has established its expertise and credentials to produce generics and drugs at lower costs and meet the needs of many nations, is betting big in repeating the story in the vaccines field too beginning with Covid-19. In the long fight against HIV/AIDS, it was Indian drug makers like Cipla, Hetero, Matrix, Aurobindo, Lupin, etc., which made anti-retrovirals at affordable prices and supplied to Africa, which suffered the most and developing nations like India.

The Indian vaccine makers led by the SII have done it in vaccines and emerged as main suppliers to the WHO, UNICEF, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative) in supplying a wide range of vaccines. They are already into the thick of action in the race for the Covid-19 vaccines.

-The writer is an independent journalist and former Associate Editor at The Hindu Business Line

By M Somasekhar