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NEW DELHI : AstraZeneca plc is working on next-generation covid-19 vaccines in the continuing battle against the pandemic, said Gagandeep Singh Bedi, managing director of the UK-based pharmaceutical company’s India unit. During the pandemic, covid-19 vaccines manufactured by the company helped save more than six million lives worldwide till December 2021, Bedi said in an interview. So far, AstraZeneca and its partners have supplied more than three billion vaccine doses to more than 180 countries. Approximately, two-thirds of these went to low-and lower-middle-income countries, including more than 470 million doses delivered to 130 countries through the Covax facility. Talking about the recent contaminated cough syrup incident, Bedi said there is a need to understand the regulatory processes around it to prevent such events in the future. Edited excerpts:
Is AstraZeneca working on a next-gen covid vaccine?
We have got multiple offerings when it comes to the battle against covid, particularly for the vulnerable population, to offer a remarkable set of protection that can be really long-lasting. As variants change, so do the vaccine generation chances and that’s an immense amount of work that is being done. Every time you have a new variant, you test your vaccine against that. So, it’s a part of the clinical development programme. You then develop the variants of these vaccines to counter. Hence, yes; we are working on next-gen covid vaccines and work is in progress.
What sort of collaborations has AstraZeneca done in the recent past?
The most impactful collaboration that we saw in India, as well as globally, was the Oxford-AztraZeneca partnership, which really turned the tide in our battle against covid-19. Particularly, if you look from the context of a developing world and India specifically, our covid vaccines have been used by more than 90% of the adult population, which is humongous. A lot of it is due to the fact that we are a country with a protected economy with early access to covid vaccines. In July 2020, AstraZeneca decided to tech-transfer it to Serum Institute. The second part of it was establishing the entire clinical development programme, which was run at an unprecedented pace. Third, it was the most affordable vaccine in the world. The firm decided not to charge any profit for the years 2020 and 2021 and that made it very accessible to governments across the world. Our partnership with Serum has been legendary in terms of the capacity, scale and professionalism they brought. So, that was a very meaningful collaboration we have done. Apart from this, we have got multiple collaborations at the global level. Our acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals is also a success to answer the need of rare diseases. In India, we have collaborated with Sun Pharma for two of our drugs like Dapagliflozin, for which we really need their capabilities to go beyond metros. We have also partnered with the governments of Sweden and India and have set up a centre of excellence at AIIMS Delhi and Jodhpur, where we are trying to see how can we bring either diagnosis or treatment for patients.
How many covid-19 vaccines has AstraZeneca supplied across the world in the last two years?
The vaccine is estimated to have helped save over six million lives between 8 December 2020 and 8 December 2021. Our shared commitment to global equitable access has helped protect lives in low and lower middle-income countries. To date, AstraZeneca and our partners have released supply of more than 3 billion vaccine doses to more than 180 countries across every continent. Approximately two-thirds of these went to low-and lower-middle-income countries, including more than 470 million doses delivered to 130 countries through the Covax facility.
What is the status of the AstraZeneca nasal covid vaccine?
The intranasal covid formulation is always an option for a vaccine and it showed acceptable tolerability profile, but it did not induce a consistent mucosal antibody response or a strong systematic response. For this reason, we along with Oxford University, have decided to discontinue this project.
What is the company doing on oncology?
We have invested significantly on oncology intervention in the last five years. We are running 30-plus clinical trials across the world on the oncology front. The latest we are doing now is new intervention in the treatment of lung cancer for early access and diagnosis.
How do you see the recent controversy over contaminated cough syrups?
It’s a very unfortunate development which happened recently. Let us not jump the gun and wait for investigation into the drug manufacturing process, find where the gaps were, and let us first understand that. India’s pharma industry’s reputation was built over decades and we have more audits happening at all levels. By and large, we have been the largest supplier of generics and have been hailed as the pharmacy of the world for years. I don’t think that it’s a reputational damage; it’s more about understanding the regulatory process around it that we could have done differently, in terms of strong vigil, to avoid a situation like this.
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John Miller has been writing about science, gaming, and tech culture for over a decade. He’s a top-rated reviewer with extensive experience helping people find the best deals on tech and more.
