A new vaccine developed by Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi of Texas Children's Hospital could prove beneficial to lower resource countries. The location of Texas was important to the project, as there were lots of local philanthropic groups that agreed to fund their research.
Texas Children's Hospital has Max Trautner.
One of the most vexing problems in global public health is how to supply lower income countries with a vaccine that is safe, effective and affordable.
There is a vaccine called CorBEVAX. It uses old but proven vaccine technology and can be made more quickly than most of the COVID vaccines in use today.
Dr. Martin is the executive director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Washington, D.C. It will allow low-income countries to be able to produce and distribute these vaccines in a way that is affordable, effective and safe.
Two decades ago, the story of CORBEVAX began. They worked on vaccines and treatments for neglected tropical diseases at George Washington University.
They decided to tackle the disease when it broke out in 2003 The Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development created a vaccine candidate using the technology after moving to Houston. This involves using a virus or bacterium that can cause an immune response but not cause disease.
"It's the same technology as the vaccine that's been around for decades," Hotez says.
The vaccine candidate looked promising, but the outbreak petered out. There is no evidence of disease or need for a vaccine.
When a new strain of coronaviruses triggered the COVID-19 pandemic, Hotez and Bottazzi thought they could modify their technology to fight it. Both the virus causing COVID and the virus causing SIRS are similar.
Hotez says they tried to impress government officials with the vaccine.
"People were so fixated on innovation that nobody thought, 'Hey, maybe we could use a low-cost durable easy breezy vaccine that can vaccine the whole world,'" Hotez says."
"We really couldn't get any traction in the U.S., but our mission is always to enable technologies for low- and middle-income countries production and use."
They turned to private philanthropies. The JPB Foundation was a major donor early on.
The Kleberg Foundation, the [John S.] Dunn Foundation, and the Tito's Vodka were all Texas philanthropies, according to Hotez. The MD Anderson Foundation contributed.
When people say, "Why did we move from Washington, D.C. to Texas?" We knew that this was a great place to raise money. There were other, smaller donors from all over the country.
Hotez says that there are other vaccines that have a track record than the ones from Pfizer and Moderna. He and Bottazzi were pretty sure that CorBEVAX would work.
It's cheap, a dollar, dollar fifty a dose, says Hotez. You're not going to get less expensive than that.
They were right to be confident that CorBEVAX would work. The vaccine was found to be effective in preventing disease caused by the original COVID virus strain and 80% against the delta variant, according to a study conducted in India. It is still being tested.
The real world is already being entered by CORBEVAX. The vaccine was given emergency use authorization last month. The vaccine is being made by Biological E Ltd. The company says it has sold 300 million doses to the Indian government.
The intellectual property of the vaccine will be available to everyone, according to the author. South Africa and Latin America can be used to make this vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna are not sharing their recipe.
The CORBEVAX technology can't be changed as quickly as a vaccine can be changed.
Public health officials have to make difficult decisions.
"If you want to make something that can be manufactured at a large global capacity and at a low cost of production, then something that can be adapted relatively quickly is the way to go," says Prashant Yadav, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.
The ideal vaccine would have both qualities, and Peter Hotez is trying to develop technologies that can do that.
He says there's no problem with pushing innovation. That is one of the positive features of the U.S. vaccine program. It wasn't balanced with a portfolio or oldies.
Hotez hopes his oldie will bring about a brighter future for the world.
