The great vaccine … bake off … has begun

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Members of a team at the Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines lab in Cape Town, South Africa. The World Health Organization has enlisted the company to replicate Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Petro Terblanche, managing director of Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, says that while Moderna’s patent is helpful, «it’s written very carefully and cleverly to not disclose absolutely everything.»

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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The quality control department at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Afrigen’s mandate isn’t just to figure out how to produce Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The World Health Organization wants the company to become a teaching center where manufacturers from around the world will come to learn the process.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Tommy Trenchard for NPR

Afrigen’s mandate isn’t just to figure out how to produce Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The World Health Organization wants the company to become a teaching center where manufacturers from around the world will come to learn the process.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

All the more so, since an additional goal of the effort is to devise a COVID vaccine that can remain stable at much higher temperatures than the ones made by Moderna and Pfizer.

«That’s a tall order,» concedes Afrigen’s Treblanche. But she says it’s both do-able and vital—given how much of an obstacle the extreme cold chain required by the current mRNA poses in African countries with limited infrastructure.

«Moderna is the blueprint,» she says. But in the long term, «this is about trying to make a vaccine that’s even better.»