In an ef­fort to boost the sup­ply of its AAV Covid-19 vac­cine abroad, As­traZeneca has amend­ed its li­cense agree­ment with Biokang­tai to com­mer­cial­ize the drug in main­land Chi­na, Pak­istan and In­done­sia, Biokang­tai an­nounced Wednes­day.

Biokang­tai will mar­ket, man­u­fac­ture and dis­trib­ute the drug to ease the short­ened sup­ply and make the vac­cine more ac­ces­si­ble. The vac­cine has been ap­proved in 185 coun­tries so far, the com­pa­ny said in a press re­lease, but short­ened sup­ply, cou­pled with is­sues sur­round­ing rare, but fa­tal, blood clots, have led vac­ci­na­tion num­bers to stall out.

In main­land Chi­na, around 63% of the pop­u­la­tion is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

Both As­traZeneca and Biokang­tai re­vealed the li­cense agree­ment at the Chi­na In­ter­na­tion­al Im­port Ex­po in No­vem­ber 2020.

As­traZeneca al­so has a li­cense agree­ment with The Serum In­sti­tute in In­dia, mak­ing it eas­i­er to gets dos­es in the arms of res­i­dents of a coun­try that is still see­ing 43,000 cas­es a day. That’s a stark im­prove­ment from May, when the num­ber of dai­ly cas­es hov­ered around the 400,000 mark, but still vul­ner­a­ble, with just 12% of the pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. Near­ly 40% have re­ceived at least one dose.

Chi­nese pro­tein-based Covid-19 vac­cine gets man­u­fac­tur­ing OK

Mean­while, Chi­nese biotech Clover Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals an­nounced that its sub­sidiary Zhe­jiang Clover Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal re­ceived a man­u­fac­tur­ing per­mit to make their own pro­tein-based Covid-19 vac­cine can­di­date at a Changx­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

Clover’s end-to-end plat­form us­es sin­gle-use tech­nol­o­gy. The fa­cil­i­ty has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to pro­duce a bil­lion dos­es of anti­gens for the Clover can­di­date SCB-2019, which is cur­rent­ly in Phase II/III tri­als. The com­pa­ny an­tic­i­pates launch­ing the can­di­date by the end of 2021, if grant­ed emer­gency ap­proval. If it is, it will be one of the first pro­tein-based Covid-19 vac­cines.

Us­ing its Trimer-Tag plat­form, Clover has de­vel­oped the vac­cine us­ing an orig­i­nal strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The can­di­date com­bines SCB-2019 with Dy­navax’s CpG 1018 and alu­minum hy­drox­ide.

Bayer and Exscientia are winding down their three-year collaboration, leaving the big German pharma to take the AI-designed compounds born out of the pact further.

London-based Exscientia revealed in its Q2 update that the partners have “mutually agreed to end” their collaboration, which kicked off in early 2020, after recently achieving a drug discovery milestone. In an SEC filing, Exscientia said it terminated the pact on May 30, about six months early.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”