Marcelo Figueiras is the president of the Richmond laboratory. His project to manufacture vaccines against Covid in Argentina experienced in the last three years a parable of death and resurrection. After a moment of frustration, he now seeks to achieve a happy ending.
The story, as you will remember, begins in the middle of the Covid pandemic, when vaccines were still lacking in Argentina. Then, with support from the Government, Figueiras managed to establish a trust in July 2021 for 85 million dollars to create the “Life Project”.
This name derived from the vaccine Sputnik V, whose proven effectiveness against Covid never achieved WHO endorsement. The doses that Richmond began to package in Argentina were called “Sputnik Vida”, matching the “V” of the original brand.
The laboratory packaged about 9 million vaccines while its owner built a new production plant in Pilar to support the “Life Project”. The objective was not only to package Sputnik V in the country, but to carry out complete production, from the active ingredient to its final formulation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, changed the course of this story just as WHO inspectors were preparing a last visit to the Gamaleya Center. The objective was to review the correctness of certain previous observations whose overcoming could imply that Sputnik V would finally have, the same international status than the American vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
Marcelo Figueiras, president of the Argentine laboratory Richmond.
But the missiles were stronger. That WHO inspection never took place and Richmond found that on his horizon there was a business that was definitely missing a leg: how to compete with vaccines that had international support.
At the same time, the initially planned times To build the Pilar plant, certain products were delayed without a date, according to the laboratory’s explanations, from delays at Customs in the entry of machinery and construction supplies.
It was a path, as can be seen, full of vicissitudes and obstacles, which now, at the start of 2024, seems to be on its way to getting back on track. Figueiras was ecstatic last week. The reason? The ill-fated Sputnik Vida achieved certified replacement in Richmond business plans through another Covid vaccine.
The news came out a few weeks before the Pilar plant finally cuts ribbons. The inauguration that has been postponed now would be confirmed for Marchas confirmed by Figueiras himself when communicating that – repeating the steps of Sputnik V – it will now be the Cansino vaccine that will first be packaged in the country and then its production will be complete.
Indeed, Richmond achieved ANMAT certification of the Convidecia vaccine and is working on the presentation of the same vaccine but against the subvariant of Ómicron XBB1.5.
The new Pilar plant where, among others, the Cansino vaccine against Covid will be manufactured.
The laboratory was responsible for explaining in a statement that the Cansino vaccine “It was approved by the World Health Organization and its effectiveness was evaluated in studies carried out in different countries, including Argentina. And the results of the main study were published in the prestigious journal The Lancet”.
The Lancet had been another chapter of the controversy with Sputnik V, when the efficacy and safety results were not disseminated even though the medication was already being applied. The publication, after all, occurred on February 2, 2021, more than two months later that the first doses of the Russian vaccine had already immunized a few thousand Argentines without that amount of transparency.
The ANMAT certification, this week, was the corollary of the agreement between Cansino and Richmond signed in 2022 for the production and marketing of different vaccines. This against Covid is the first on which it was carried out technology transfer.
It is worth remembering that Cansino already had a presence in Argentina through the pharmaceutical company Cassará, which was a local intermediary between the Chinese laboratory and the provincial states that wanted to acquire the vaccine. Its novelty at that time, against the ancestral Wuhan variant, was that it was unit doses (now it will just be a reinforcement).
But the demand at that time soon declined and Cassará in turn adopted an alternative path: the alliance with the University of San Martín for research into the Argentine Arvac vaccine, now approved and which will soon be available to be applied in the country. .
The epilogue of this story occurs eight months after the WHO ended the pandemic, at a time when the demand for Covid vaccines is at its peak. historic floora product of the population’s disinterest in completing its reinforcements despite the fact that the virus has never stopped being a potential threat.
2024-01-14 09:01:38
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