No technology transfer of Covaxin from ICMR, says Bharat Biotech

No technology transfer of Covaxin from ICMR, says Bharat Biotech

Amid row over the sharing of Covaxin technology, Bharat Biotech recently stated that there was no technology transfer from the Indian Council of Medical Research or National Institute of Virology, Pune.

There was news from several quarters with regards to the sharing of Covaxin technology among the three players. Bharat Biotech clearly stated that any such collaboration was "only to the extent of procuring the SARSCoV-2 strain and studies that were conducted on large animals, monkeys, and hamsters as the private sector does not have access to such large animals."

Suchitra Ella, Bharat Biotech managing director, was speaking on a panel discussion organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry. She said, "When we reached out to ICMR-NIV we only reached out for the strain of the virus. There was no technology as such coming to the industry from the academic body then. We just needed our hands on the strain and that's what we got from Pune. From there on it was developed in-house, completely funded in-house, and taken through all the testing, animal, toxicology and human testing...," Ella said.

NIV Pune and ICMR have been "collaborating to the sense that the animal studies that had to be done on monkeys and hamsters and we in the private industry don't have access to have such large animals…It is not a technology transfer, it was a strain and then we also did the clinical studies for the large animals with ICMR," Ella said.

Asking on the children's trails, Ella said that it will be starting from June which will continue to the next two to three months. The study will be only a safety study as the efficacy of Covaxin has already been proved among adults but not in children from 2-12 age groups.

"If all goes well and the second wave does not get between us…we look at a timeline of 60-90 days maximum…within that timeframe, we hope to have good safety data published for children and submitted to the drug controller general," said Ella

Citing the importance of trials, she said, "…having conducted pediatric trials on more than 5,00,000 babies and infants across 20 countries in the world we know that this is doable…"