Nanogen signs Covid vaccine technology transfer, production deals with Indian firm

Ho Nhan, the company’s director, said Tuesday that the deal is with Vekaria Healthcare and the next steps in negotiations for technology transfer would begin within this month.

The Vietnamese embassy in India announced that the signing of a confidentiality agreement between the two companies had been done on August 8.

It said representatives of Nanogen took part in the event online from Vietnam, while Vietnamese ambassador Pham Sanh Chau and representatives of Vekaria personally attended it in India.

Chau said in a press release: "The cooperation between the two companies is important in the context the pandemic has been raging in India, Vietnam and many parts of the world. The early introduction of Nanocovax for testing, manufacturing and distributing on a large scale will contribute to averting the pandemic."

The release from the embassy quoted a representative of Vekaria Healthcare Company as saying Nanocovax has been researched and developed using recombinant protein technology, and initial research reports have shown it to be very promising.

Vekaria Healthcare is a subsidiary of Vekaria Group, a multi-industry business based in Gujarat state.

Nanocovax is currently the only Vietnamese Covid vaccine that is near completion.

Nanogen said last week the vaccine has an efficacy rate of 90 percent based on a comparison between the immunogenicity results of recovered patients and volunteers injected with two doses in the second phase of clinical trials by the Pasteur Institute in HCMC.

The firm began developing the vaccine in the middle of last year and began clinical trials for it last December.

The third and final human trials are being carried out on 13,000 people in Hanoi, the northern Hung Yen Province and two Mekong Delta provinces, Tien Giang and Long An.

The company has already sought emergency approval for the vaccine from the Ministry of Health, which is now consulting with the World Health Organization and South Korean experts for the purpose.

Nanogen said Nanocovax uses the most suitable harmless antigen fragments or proteins of the new coronavirus to stimulate an appropriate immune response.

Nhan said the company’s production capacity is 8-12 million doses a month but is set to upgrade it to 30-50 million after October, and expects to supply 50 million doses by December and 100 million doses by 2022.

It is not clear for now how much the Indian company will produce and whether it is free for it to sell the vaccines.