Geodiversifying biopharma manufacturing for equitable vaccine access: Learning from CEPI and Afrigen
Rift Valley fever is a viral disease that affects both humans and livestock. Transmitted by mosquitoes, the virus was first discovered in the Rift Valley in Kenya in the 1930’s. Over the years, the disease has also been detected in other African countries and parts of the Middle East.
Since Rift Valley fever is mosquito-borne, its outbreaks have time and again been linked to intense periods of rainfall and flooding. The reappearance of the El Niño phenomenon and the worsening of climate change portend a troubling spread of the disease as more and more regions of the world become conducive homes for mosquitoes. As extreme weather events like floods increase in intensity and frequency, there is a very high chance that the world’s Rift Valley risk will only become bigger.
While we have a Rift Valley fever vaccine for use in animals, we don’t yet have one for human use. CEPI wants to change that.
CEPI’s funding for Afrigen to develop a human mRNA vaccine for Rift Valley fever.
Afrigen Biologics, a South African biotechnology firm, is pioneering the path to develop an mRNA-based vaccine against Rift Valley fever. If it successfully makes it through clinical trials, this vaccine could be just the tool South Africa needs to fight this potentially deadly disease.
In January 2025, Afrigen announced that it was being supported by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, for short. With a USD 6.2 million grant from CEPI, Afrigen’s researchers will work with the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) to advance the vaccine candidate through preclinical development and phase I trials in people in South Africa or another country in Africa affected by a Rift Valley fever outbreak.
This grant isn’t the first investment CEPI has made in Rift Valley fever candidates. It is already supporting three other candidates. Nonetheless, Afrigen’s candidate is unique in that it is relying on cutting-edge mRNA technology that the company has developed as the hub for the WHO and MPP mRNA Technology Transfer Programme.
Ensuring equitable vaccine access: CEPI’s Equitable Access Policy.
This funding agreement between CEPI and Afrigen is subject to CEPI’s Equitable Access Policy.
The seed for CEPI was planted during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The coalition was created to not only accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases but also enable equitable access to these vaccines for the people affected by these outbreaks. After all, scientific breakthroughs mean nothing if they cannot be accessed by the populations that need them.
Given this mission, CEPI implements a policy regarding equitable access to the outputs of all CEPI-supported programmes. This means that Afrigen’s Rift Valley fever vaccine, should it succeed in clinical trials, will also be subject to the terms of this policy.
Under this policy,
“Equitable access to epidemic vaccines in the context of an outbreak means that appropriate vaccines are first available to populations when and where they are needed to end an outbreak or curtail an epidemic, regardless of ability to pay.”
To achieve this, CEPI requires that investigational stockpiles of the vaccine be maintained so that they can be used free of charge when an outbreak occurs. In line with this policy, CEPI will also coordinate with others in the global health community to enable licensure of vaccines funded by them and to ensure the procurement, allocation, deployment and administration of licensed vaccines to protect global health, with costing not being a deterrent for either consumption or production.
For its part, Afrigen is committed to these principles. The South African biotech is committed to developing investigational stockpiles for use in outbreak situations if the vaccine candidate is successful. The company is also committed to ensuring affordable pricing and publishing with open access the clinical trial and epidemiological data generated by its work.
Most importantly, to ensure access to the populations that truly need it, Afrigen will endeavour to manufacture the vaccine close to where outbreaks of Rift Valley fever may occur. By doing so, it will shorten the vaccine supply chain, minimise supply risks, and geodiversify regional manufacturing capabilities.
This endeavour also aligns with Afrigen’s first partnership with CEPI in August 2024 to advance research into the company’s mRNA vaccine tech, and with CEPI’s 100 Days Mission to develop vaccines against a novel infectious threat within 100 days from identification.
PodTech™’s endeavour to localise vaccine manufacturing to disease endemic areas.
We started PodTech™ with a similar intention as that which is driving the Afrigen and CEPI partnership – to ensure that we have vaccines and other health interventions for the diseases and the populations that truly need them.
As Afrigen and other CEPI partners endeavour to manufacture outbreak-specific vaccines close to where these outbreaks occur, PodTech™, too, is committed to the localisation of vaccine manufacturing. This is, after all, the key to strategic, public health, and economic autonomy for the regions affected.
As other pharma and biotech companies around the world progress in their vaccine development efforts, we encourage them to take a leaf out of CEPI’s and their partners’ books to bridge the geographical, cost and access gap between vaccine production and consumption.
Pharmaceutical companies can do so by investing in PodTech™’s end-to-end solutions for biopharma manufacturing capacity building. Localising vaccine production using PodTech™’s solutions will not only cut their costs and time to market, but it will also help them develop the trust and distribution that can be achieved by regional visibility.
In the fight against infectious diseases, vaccines are an indispensable tool. Partner up with PodTech™ to get them to the populations that need them the most and make the world a healthier place.