Indigenous Vaccines

Why is in news? Union Minister DrJitendra Singh says, India has developed four indigenous Vaccines in just two years

Union Ministry for Science & Technology said that India has developed four indigenous Vaccines in just two years.

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in Ministry of Science & Technology has through “Mission COVID Suraksha”, delivered four vaccines, augmented the manufacturing of Covaxin, and created necessary infrastructure for smooth development of future vaccines, so that our country is pandemic ready. These vaccines were developed in collaboration with various institutes and companies.

Four vaccines –(i) ZyCoV-D- World’s 1st and India’s indigenously developed DNA Vaccine, (ii) CORBEVAXTM-India’s first protein subunit vaccine,(iii) GEMCOVAC™-19 - World’s 1st and India’s indigenously developed mRNA vaccine and (iv) iNCOVACC-World’s 1st and India’s indigenously developed intranasal COVID-19 Vaccine.

During the wake of the pandemic crisis, vaccine development for COVID-19 was accorded the highest priority by the Government and accordingly, “Mission COVID Suraksha” was announced by Government of India, at a total cost of Rs. 900 Crore, under Atmanirbhar Bharat 3.0 package.

The aim was to enable development of safe, efficacious, affordable, and indigenous COVID-19 vaccines in an accelerated manner.

The Mission with its end-to-end focus from preclinical development through clinical development and manufacturing and regulatory facilitation for deployment, would consolidate all available and funded resources towards accelerated product development.

It will be led by DBT and implemented by a dedicated Mission Implementation Unit at the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC).

The “Mission COVID Suraksha” required a strong public-private partnership (PPP) model to deliver the vaccine on an urgent basis.

The Department of Bio-Technology had the required strength and infrastructure to develop such a model and work with the scientific community, as well as, vaccine manufacturers to deliver vaccines in a short span of time, which was needed by our country and also the global community.

Also the DBT with its more than three decades long experience in vaccine research and development already had basic scientific strength through its Autonomous Institutes and also an industry-academia interface agency, i.e. BIRAC for enabling accelerated vaccine development and hence, DBT was entrusted to lead the implementation of this Mission by BIRAC.