"We celebrated internally - not like party or anything ," scientist Reddy recalls, chuckling."But we had that moment of joy." In December, when governments around the world began granting emergency authorization to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Serum already had hundreds of millions of doses ready to ship. Many of its existing scientists put in overtime. Serum hired more than 500 new staff, Jadhav says. "It was a difficult time because we had to maintain all our people, take care with their own health and follow very strict rules of isolation," recalls scientist Peddi Reddy, a deputy general manager who'd been working on development of vaccines against the human papillomavirus (HPV) when his supervisor told him to convert everything over to the experimental coronavirus vaccine. This was while India was under a national coronavirus lockdown, as the pandemic exploded.
Serum's scientists scrambled to mass-produce it anyway. Vials with the vaccine pass through a visual screening machine that checks for any deficiencies in the vaccine substance or bottling.
MODERNA COVID 19 VACCINE PRODUCTION CAPACITY HOW TO
Plans on how to do that came in the form of a technology transfer from Oxford's partner, the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.Ĭredit: Viraj Nayar for NPR. They also supplied Serum with what's called cell substrate – human embryonic kidney cells – in which to grow the new vaccine. Oxford's scientists supplied their colleagues at Serum with a weakened adenovirus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees, into which they had inserted a protein extracted from the coronavirus. Inside, was a 1-milliliter vial containing the components of a viral vector vaccine to fight the coronavirus. Last May, a tiny package arrived at Serum's Pune campus by courier from Oxford University in England. It's partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a funder of NPR and this blog) and several United Nations agencies, including UNICEF and the World Health Organization. Today Serum makes more than 1.5 billion vaccine doses a year – not including its production of COVID-19 vaccines. Serum makes vaccines for measles, tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis and many other diseases. In addition to horses, they collect luxury cars too, including a Batmobile replica the CEO had outfitted for his young son.)Ĭredit: The Serum Institute. ("Wealthy" may even be an understatement. The Poonawallas are a wealthy family of racehorse breeders. Since 1946, the property has been a stud farm – and part of it still is. Look out the window on the Serum Institute's high-tech campus, and there are dozens of reminders of the company's very different past: horses. and Japan, and logistical help from Australia, to help another Indian producer called Biological E mass-produce the U.S.-developed Johnson & Johnson vaccine. On Friday, the White House announced an agreement to bolster India's COVID-19 vaccine production by another billion doses. Last week, India's vaccine prowess won financial backing from the so-called Quad countries – the United States, Japan, Australia and India – a group that often works together to try to counter China's influence. Serum's success has highlighted and elevated India's role in the vaccine industry, leading to collaborations with the world's most powerful governments and pharmaceutical companies – and also at least one confrontation: a clash over intellectual property rights, at the World Trade Organization. A screening machine fitted with cameras checks vaccine doses for any deficiencies.
Inside Serum's sprawling factory complex in the western Indian city of Pune, those glass vials – now filled with coronavirus vaccines – whiz off conveyor belts at a rate of around 5,000 per minute.Ĭredit: Viraj Nayar for NPR. "Because we're privately listed and not accountable to investors and bankers and shareholders, it was just a quick five-minute chat between myself and my father," Poonawalla said. Poonawalla says it was an easy decision – one he made with his 78-year-old father, Cyrus.
If they didn't, Serum would end up with useless vaccines - and hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. If these vaccines did prove effective, Serum would already have hundreds of millions of doses stockpiled, to start shipping out. And that was before clinical trials proved any of them would work. Sanjit Das (photo of Cyrus Poonawalla) and Dhiraj Singh (photo of Adar Poonawalla)/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesĪdar Poonawalla, 40, told NPR last June that he decided to invest tens of millions of dollars in glass vials alone and produce four different coronavirus vaccines, including the Oxford-AstraZeneca one. All it took to take a big pandemic gamble was a 5-minute dinner table conversation. Despite its global scope, it remains a dad-and-son business. Cyrus Poonawalla (left) and his son, Adar, are the founder and CEO, respectively, of the Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer.
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