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The collective failure of the Spanish vaccine against Covid-19 | Companies

This weekend it was known that the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (Aemps) stops the approval of the clinical trial or human test of the first Spanish vaccine against Covid-19 that attempts it, led by researcher Mariano Esteban. Nothing reprehensible against the team of CSIC. This type of stoppage or failure in scientific progress is within normality. What is a collective failure is that Spain is the only world economic power that has not managed to advance so far with its own immunization solution against SARS-CoV-2, at least in clinical trials.

If it were for the homeland pharmaceutical industry and the Spanish scientific system, there would be no vaccine available and the coronavirus would continue to roam. Dozens of countries have succeeded in moving from animal to human testing, including some territories outside the scientific elite such as Cuba, Thailand, Vietnam, Kazakhstan or Indonesia. Of course, all the countries comparable to Spain have achieved this in GDP and population. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that there are 108 of these vaccines in human studies. I repeat, no Spanish. Not counting that since December of last year there are already 22 authorized vaccines (which have passed the trials) and in use in at least one country, according to Unicef ​​in its Covid-19 Vaccine Market Dashboard.

In the case of vaccines, there has been a chauvinist discourse for months by government officials and scientists themselves stating that even if the Spanish vaccine was delayed, nothing happened, that the important thing was to be in the race and that the homeland solution it would be better, “second generation”, they called. Well, neither second nor third, dozens of multinationals are already working on future alternatives with the complicated challenge of overcoming two options that have shown an efficiency of 95%, that of Pfizer/BioNTech and of Modern. Of course, no trace of a Spanish alternative. It has been seen that the king is naked and no one has wanted to acknowledge him.

Spain commonly has the vice of being ruthlessly self-critical, but curiously it is not with its science. It is common to hear that Spanish researchers are excellent and it is the lack of resources that fails. Frequently you also hear laments that scientists have to go abroad. The problem is not that they go abroad, since any of them have an obligation to train wherever the best of their specialty are, whether in Germany, the United Kingdom or the United States, but that they have to leave because the ultra-precarious country is not capable of attracting young talents.

If Spain wants to make a leap in quality, it has to attract talent, be it national or international

But let’s not be shortsighted. If Spain wants to make a leap in quality, it has to attract talent, be it national or international. The Spanish scientific system could learn from the example of the professional soccer league. You have to sign the best, wherever they come from. Did it matter to the Madrid fans that there were only three Spaniards in the eleven of the thirteenth Champions League final? Does the Catalans dislike that the best player in history, Messi, is Argentine? No. In the purest style of the Chinese president Deng Xiaoping, the important thing is not the color of the cat, but that it is capable of catching mice.

The best example is that of the first Covid-19 vaccine that reached the world and the most widespread in its use, due to its industrial capacity and the best clinical result: that of Pfizer / BioNTech. The German biotechnology company BioNTech, which was the promoter of this R&D, has as its parents the married couple of Turkish emigrants Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci. At the theoretical level, Hungarian biochemistry laid the foundations Katalin Karikó, which has spent practically its entire career in the US The American Pfizer, for its part, put its gigantic resources to advance in the development, test the vaccine and manufacture and distribute it globally.

To achieve this challenge, there must be resources, leading researchers that attract young brains and exciting projects. It is a no-brainer to say that Spain is an attractive place to live, but it is. Barcelona has demonstrated this by attracting more and more technology firms to the heat of 22 @ and a city that foreigners like. Public laboratories must look to Europe and Latin America and offer those opportunities to the best.

Unfortunately, Spanish capital has too much aversion to the risk of R&D

Without a doubt, budget shortages are one of the problems, but not the only one. In the case of the vaccine, it has been shown that there is no industry either. There are no leading biotechnology firms that have investigated on their own or promoted some of the vaccines that have emerged in public centers. Nor has there been any major national pharmaceutical company that has opted to develop it. The two oldest and surely the only two with some capacity, Grifols and Admiral, they have not gotten wet. Others like Rovi, Reig Jofre, Biofabri or Insud They have joined the laudable effort to manufacture some of the international formulas in use in Spain, but there the innovation process is scarce. There is no large national laboratory that can serve as a tractor as there is in Germany, France or the United Kingdom. And unfortunately, Spanish capital is too risk-averse to R&D.

For now the only one that advances in the attempt is the Girona firm Hipra, which makes the leap from animal to human health with its own vaccine, which awaits the approval of Aemps in the coming weeks to become the first Spanish to reach clinical trials. Without forgetting that, without a doubt, without private capital that provides resources in the early stages (seed capital) and then on a large scale, it is the public sector that has to support the leap from the laboratory to the industry.

Another barrier to Spanish public R&D is sclerotization and stagnation. There are no mechanisms or incentives to transfer science from the laboratory to society. The civil service model is imposed with the perversity of cutting off the merit of the new generations or of those who may come from outside. A scientist-civil servant can spend 20 years writing papers without any notable advance. This issue, labor, is a difficult melon to open for any politician, but we must seek an improvement in incentives and competitiveness at the international level, as Real Madrid or FC Barcelona do or any organization that wants to be among the best. The new Minister of Science, Diana Morant, has a job.

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