Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Minister of SOEs Erick Thohir asked Indra Rudiansyah, a doctoral student at the Jenner Institute University of Oxford to return to the country after completing his studies. He asked Indra to participate in developing covid-19 vaccine made by PT Bio Farma (Persero), Red and White vaccines, and vaccines for other diseases.
Previously, Indra was one of the people behind the research on the AstraZeneca vaccine made by Oxford.
“When do you plan to return? Hopefully when you return you can help Indonesia, why? Because this vaccine is important not only for Covid, but also for basic like malaria, TBC (Indonesia) is the highest in the world, our R&D is less, if you can be honest, “said Erick to Indra via live Instagram, Friday (23/7).
He hopes that Indra can help develop vaccines in Indonesia through technology viral vector as used in AstraZeneca. The reason is, vaccine development in Indonesia has never used this technology because it has only used this method inactivated virus.
He said that currently the government has developed Bio Farma’s factory capacity from 1 billion vaccines to 1.5 billion.
Of this amount, 250 million production capacity is used for Sinovac vaccines and another 250 million are still waiting for an audit from BPOM for the production of BUMN and Merah Putih COVID-19 vaccines. The remaining production capacity is used by Bio Farma to produce other vaccines.
“I hope Indra, number 1 finish at Oxford. You already have experience viral vector which in Indonesia Bio Farma still uses inactivated virus. Well, with viral vector In this case, the production system is ready and who will be able to develop the Red and White vaccine,” he added.
Erick also hopes that Indra can cooperate with Bio Farma in discussing vaccine development even though he is in the UK.
On that occasion, Indra, who had previously worked at Bio Farma since 2014, told of the process of being able to join the AstraZeneca research team. He said that at Oxford there was a research group on emerging pathogen diseases in charge of AstraZeneca’s research.
At first, the group was considered a small group both in terms of resources and funding. However, after the pandemic emerged they needed additional resources and opened up the recruitment of new research members. Meanwhile, Indra joined the malaria vaccine research team.
“Finally opened vacancies to everyone who wanted to join, I happened to register at the time, I could do this technique and then oh well, let’s just join. So, the term is the beginning of my involvement in clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines like that,” he said.
Indra is a doctoral student who received a scholarship from LPDP. Before continuing his studies, he worked at Bio Farma for two years since 2014.
“Finally I went to Oxford with the topic of malaria vaccine research but using technology viral vector,” he said.
In the midst of his busy schedule in completing his studies, he stated that he often discusses with Bio Farma regarding the development of a covid-19 vaccine, even though from a distance. If nothing goes wrong, Indra will finish his studies in October this year and then return to Indonesia.
(ulf / sfr)
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