New deal paves way for first African-owned COVID-19 vaccine

One year since the establishment of the mRNA Vaccine Technology Transfer Hub, a collaboration between two biotech companies – South Africa’s Afrigen Biologics and Belgium-based biotech Univercells Group - was announced today.

This agreement intends to pave the way for the development of the first-ever African-owned COVID-19 vaccine. The collaboration will focus on the development of a novel mRNA vaccine using intellectual property from the collaboration partners, as well as developing new IP, and is intended to supercharge access to the vaccine. Afrigen and Univercells will be supported in the collaboration by Belgian mRNA company eTheRNA Immunotherapies.

The companies will collectively tackle two major challenges that have hampered the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa and other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs): lack of local cost-effective production, and the need for cold- or super-cold chains.