Texas Doctors Help Develop 'Game-Changing' COVID Vaccine for Poor Countries

HOUSTON, Texas — Doctors at a Texas research facility helped develop what they call the “first COVID vaccine designed specifically for global health. The distribution of the new vaccine in India is already approved. The vaccine is expected to make a major impact in the spread and mutation of COVID in poorer countries across the globe.

Maria Elena Bottazzi, Ph.D., co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), and Dr. Peter J. Hotez, professor of pediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he co-heads the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development, recently received approval from India’s drug regulation agency for a new vaccine to help fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Two years into the pandemic, CORBEVAX is the first COVID vaccine designed specifically for global health,” the two research scientists wrote in an article in Scientific American. “It is a milestone for global vaccine equity, something we believe will overcome vaccine hesitancy, and serves as a blueprint for how to develop a potent vaccine for pandemic use in the absence of substantial public funding.”

“This is a critical next step to vaccinate our way out of the COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote.

The team of scientists at Texas Children’s CVD and Baylor College of Medicine developed the vaccine and licensed it to Biological E. Limited (BioE) with no strings attached. BioE now plans to produce the vaccine, CORBEVAX, at the rate of 100,000 doses per month and has an order from the government of India for 300 million doses. The company has already produced 150 million doses that are now ready to be rolled out.

Dr. Hotez said the development of a relatively inexpensive vaccine for distribution in low and middle-income countries will help prevent the spread of new variants of the coronavirus.

“The reason why we have this situation now with Omicron, just like we had the situation with Delta, is we allow large unvaccinated populations in low and middle-income countries to remain unvaccinated,” Hotez said in an interview with Democracy Now. “Delta arose out of an unvaccinated population in India in early 2021, and Omicron arose out of an unvaccinated population on the African continent later in the same year.”

“These two variants of concern represent failures, failures by global leaders to work with sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America to vaccinate the southern hemisphere,” Hotez charged.

“We got tired of it,” the doctor continued. “So we decided to do what we have always done for 20 years, … We make vaccines for diseases that the pharma companies won’t make for parasitic infections such as Chagas disease. We adopted a coronavirus program about 10 years ago. And then we flipped that around to make the COVID vaccine.”

“The attraction is that technology is already in place and has been for years, sometimes decades, in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Brazil,” Dr. Hotez said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “If you aspire to make a COVID vaccine for global health, this is the best technology to select because it’s already in place and you can partner with developing countries’ vaccine manufacturers.”

“CORBEVAX is made through microbial fermentation in yeast, similar to the process used to produce the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine that many resource-poor countries make and employ,” the researchers explained in Scientific American. “This will allow for local manufacturing of COVID vaccines similar to CORBEVAX. Texas Children’s CVD and Baylor have already licensed the COVID vaccine technology to companies in Indonesia and Bangladesh and have licensed it for production in African countries such as Botswana.”

Hotez and Bottazzi claim CORBEVAZ is one of the safest of the COVID-19 vaccines currently in use with only mild adverse events in three trials conducted in India. They say is is cheaper to produce, easier to store, and is safe.

“CORBEVAX also produced a higher amount of neutralizing antibodies against the Delta and Beta variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID,” the researchers continued. They said they expect to have Omicron data soon.

“We now have a new beginning and a head start to finally vaccinate the world,” they concluded. “Remarkably, Texas Children’s CVD did this with no major federal or G7 support, instead, relying almost exclusively on private philanthropy based in Texas, New York, and elsewhere.”

The Texas-based researchers plan to team up with the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies to “fully vaccinate the world.”