Pfizer and the Biovac Institute of South Africa have reached an agreement for the transfer of technology that will enable the Biovac Institute to manufacture Pfizer’s Prevenar 13 Vaccine at Biovac’s new commercial scale manufacturing plant here in Cape Town.
As part of the agreement Pfizer will transfer ownership of equipment to Biovac and Pfizer will also implement a skills-transfer process so that South African employees of Biovac will be able to manufacture the vaccine after the technical transfer period. The agreement is designed to ensure that the Biovac Institute is able to supply Prevenar 13 on a sustainable basis in South Africa.
Over the next five years the technology transfer will take place in three phases -Phase I : Packaging of labelled syringes, phase II: Labelling and Packaging of Bulk Unlabelled Syringes, phase III: Formulation (RDM), Filling, Labelling and Packaging – and local manufacture is scheduled to start in 2020.
The Biovac Institute (Biovac) was established in 2003 as a public private partnership between the Biovac Consortium and the South African Government (represented at the time by the South African Department of Health). Currently, the South African Government has a 47,5% equity stake in the company, made up of the Department of Science and Technology (35%) and the Technology Innovation Agency (12,5%). The Biovac Consortium holds 52,5% of the shares through ENDO (previously Litha Healthcare Group Limited) (44,6%) and Disability Empowerment Concerns (7,9%).
Biovac aims to revitalise human vaccine manufacturing in South Africa by building capacity in all aspects of vaccine development and manufacturing, from products for clinical trials to full scale commercial production. Biovac is the only vaccine manufacturer in sub-Saharan Africa and it currently sources the vaccines it supplies to the Department of Health from appropriately registered pharmaceutical companies in South Africa.
“We have a small pharmaceutical industry that boasts some of the fastest growing companies in the country. We have the largest market for HIV drugs in the world. We have a well developed generics industry. We have globally respected researchers,” said Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor MP, at the Biovac-Pfizer vaccine manufacture agreement signing ceremony.
