The center is now scaling up and confirming the manufacture of Moderna vaccines at a commercial scale after having already achieved mRNA vaccine production at a laboratory scale. It is simpler to keep the vaccine in low- and middle-income environments where excessive refrigeration can be difficult because it can be kept at moderately warm temperatures.
The hub also serves as a resource for producers in less developed nations, assisting them in learning how to produce mRNA vaccines in big quantities and in accordance with international standards. Early in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, exposing Africa’s heavy reliance on foreign vaccines.
According to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only slightly more than half of the 1.2 billion people on the continent have received their full dose of coronavirus vaccination. By introducing genetic material encoding the code for essential components of a pathogen into human cells, mRNA-based vaccines stimulate an immune response.
The Covid-19 pandemic served as an essential testing ground for the developing technology, showing how a safe and effective vaccine could be developed in a matter of months as opposed to years for conventional vaccinations. The Cape Town initiative was established with assistance from the WHO and is managed by the South African Medical Research Council, biotechnology business Afrigen, and biopharmaceutical company Biovac.
The hub might increase production capacity for additional drugs and items like insulin to treat diabetes, cancer treatments, and perhaps even vaccinations for diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV. With financing mostly from the European Union, France, Germany, and Canada, funding to date totals $117 million.
