Moderna won't share its vaccine recipe. WHO has hired an African startup to crack it
Fans of the television series The Great British Bake Off have long marveled at the skill contestants show during the dreaded "technical challenge" — for which they are given a basket with all the ingredients needed to make a highly unusual dish but a set of instructions that are often as vague as, "Bake until ready." Now a team of scientists at a pharmaceutical startup in South Africa is essentially confronting the same type of test — except the stakes are life and death.
The World Health Organization has hired the company, called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, as part of a $100 million plan to figure out how to make an mRNA vaccine against COVID that is as close as possible to the version produced by Moderna.
Until recently, Afrigen specialized in developing veterinary vaccines using fairly traditional methods. Now, says Afrigen's Managing Director, Petro Treblanche, the company's labs are a hive of research into the cutting-edge technology behind mRNA vaccines.
"You will see scientists in white coats and some with full personal protective equipment [suits] operating a bioreactor to make the actual DNA," says Treblanche. "You will see microbiology clean rooms where testing is taking place. You will see stability chambers where some of the products are put in to understand how stable they are in different environments of humidity and temperature."
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/10/19/1047411856/the-great-vaccine-bake-off-has-begun
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