Epygen Biotech, an Indian biopharmaceutical company engaged in research and manufacturing therapeutic proteins, has announced it has received funding from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India to initiate the Phase I and Phase II trials of an indigenous affordable Receptor Binding Domain (RBD based vaccine) against present and future SARS-CoV–2 variants.
With an anticipated price point of less than Rs 150 per dose, an Indian company for the first time will be able to adopt the highly productive C1-cell protein production platform, which has been demonstrated by scientists at the European Union Zoonotic Anticipation and Preparedness Initiative (ZAPI) program, it said in a press statement.
The COVID-19 vaccine will be made available to the government as well as for private consumption and it is expected to hit the Indian market by the end of 2022 or early 2023.
The company plans to initially produce a minimum of 100 million doses of this vaccine, to help address health disparity in the subcontinent, it said.
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Epygen has licensed the C1-cell protein production platform from Dyadic International of USA (Nasdaq DYAI), to develop the hyper-productive C1 SARS-CoV-2 RBD cell line which was developed together with the Israeli Institute of Biological Research (IIBR), an Israeli government biotech lab and VTT, a government-owned lab in Finland.
Epygen is developing and expects to produce large quantities of the vaccine at a much lower cost at its Patalganga (near Mumbai, India) based state-of-the-art biologics facility, the statement added.
Debayan Ghosh, Founder and CMD of Epygen Biotech, explains, "There exists a natural process of continuous mutation of Coronavirus. Vaccines have to evolve against new variants to stay ahead in the game. The team has already developed antigens against the Wuhan (the original Covid-19 virus), Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron variants. The Department of Biotechnology of India has thoroughly evaluated our extremely encouraging data from Europe, Israel and India, facilitating the funding for Phase I and Phase II clinical trials. We are further planning to raise Rs 200 Crores for Phase III, which will help us augment our production capacity and roll out the vaccine as soon as possible. The vaccine will serve as the primary dose as well as a booster to fight the newer variants amongst the masses of this country.”
