The first packaged batches would leave in June 2022. Rionegro, headquarters of a new production plant.
In just six months, Colombia will take the first step to regain its pharmaceutical autonomy in the face of vaccine production. It took about 23 years and a pandemic for the country to commit to the manufacture of drugs, which will include doses to combat covid-19.
President Iván Duque assured that in February 2022 the construction of a production plant will begin that will be located in Rionegro, Oriente de Antioquia, and that four months later it would be able to “produce small batches of vaccines”. However, the Ministry of Health indicated that in principle it will be a dose packaging process.
The initiative will have the collaboration of the Government, the Colombian company VaxThera –which will receive resources from Sura and which was specially created for the production of vaccines in Colombia– and the Canadian company Providence Therapeutics (see box).
According to the figures Sura shared last June, the total investment to be made in the VaxThera company is $ 54 million. And although at first the possibility of establishing the new vaccine plant in Bogotá, Cundinamarca and Valle del Cauca was considered, last September it was known that it will be located in Rionegro.
“With the new technologies that are going to be brought to Colombia, we will be at the forefront in the production of vaccines such as MRNA,” said Jorge Osorio, the president of VaxThera.
This pharmaceutical technology, also known as messenger RNA, teaches the body’s cells to make a protein that later produces an immune response against the virus. Vaccines of this class were recently developed by companies such as Pfizer and Moderna to attack the coronavirus.
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Although the urgent need at this time is precisely to fight the covid-19 pandemic, in Rionegro not only will vaccines be produced to mitigate the effects of that disease, but doses against other viruses will also be produced. Even, according to the Minister of Health Fernando Ruiz, vaccines could also be distributed in other countries in South America and the Caribbean.
And although President Iván Duque spoke of “vaccine production” for June 2022, the capacity that the VaxThera laboratory will initially have will be limited to the “fill and finish” process, as confirmed to EL COLOMBIANO from the Ministry of health.
The fill and finish is the last part of the pharmaceutical production chain. It refers to the packaging, packaging and distribution of vaccines. However, the Government’s objective is that in the future the country has the capacity to produce these drugs from scratch and also increase the volume of batches.
In addition, President Duque stressed that from February next year, the Providence company will also begin to develop clinical trials of vaccines against different variants of covid-19.
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Regain sovereignty
Scientific societies and public health experts have long been calling for the promotion of local vaccine production to guarantee pharmaceutical sovereignty. However, Iván Darío Vélez, a specialist doctor at the University of Antioquia professor, assured that there must be political will for the State to invest in scientific research and development.
“It is not just a factory that develops vaccines, it requires that the academy and research centers make the discoveries and in vitro studies,” said Vélez.
The academic pointed out that to overcome the dependence on foreign drugs that the country has created, all phases of research and development of vaccines must be strengthened.
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69
millions of anticovid doses have arrived in Colombia from abroad throughout this year.
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100
Millions of vaccines are expected to be produced by VaxThera in a single year once it goes live.
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