Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Aug 26;40(36):5302-5312.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.05.065. Epub 2022 May 30.

COVID-19 management landscape: A need for an affordable platform to manufacture safe and efficacious biotherapeutics and prophylactics for the developing countries

Vyankatesh Pidiyar  1 , Ganesh Kumraj  1 , Kafil Ahmed  1 , Syed Ahmed  2 , Sanket Shah  1 , Piyali Majumder  1 , Bhawna Verma  1 , Sarang Pathak  1 , Sushmita Mukherjee  1
Affiliations
Review

COVID-19 management landscape: A need for an affordable platform to manufacture safe and efficacious biotherapeutics and prophylactics for the developing countries

Vyankatesh Pidiyar et al. Vaccine. .

Abstract

To gain world-wide control over COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to have affordable and accessible vaccine and monoclonal antibody technologies across the globe. In comparison to the western countries, Asian and African countries have less percentage of vaccination done which warrants urgent attention. Global manufacturer production capacities, dependency on advanced nations for the supply of vaccines or the raw material, national economy, limited research facilities, and logistics could be the factors. This review article elaborates the existing therapeutic and prophylactic strategies available for COVID-19, currently adopted vaccine and monoclonal antibody platforms for SARS-CoV-2 along with the approaches to bridge the gap prevailing in the challenges faced by low- and middle-income countries. We believe adoption of yeast-derived P. pastoris technology can help in developing safe, proven, easy to scale-up, and affordable recombinant vaccine or monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This platform has the advantage of not requiring a dedicated or specialized facility making it an affordable option using existing manufacturing facilities, without significant additional capital investments. Besides, the technology platform of multiantigen vaccine approach and monoclonal antibody cocktail will serve as effective weapons to combat the threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 variants. Successful development of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies using such a technology will lead to self-sufficiency of these nations in terms of availability of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.

Keywords: Biotherapeutics; COVID-19; Monoclonal antibody cocktail; Multiantigen vaccine; Pichia pastoris; Prophylactics; SARS-CoV-2; Variants of Concern.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Rationale for targeting different regions of SARS-CoV-2 for multiantigen vaccine design and monoclonal antibody cocktail
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Multiantigen vaccine and monoclonal antibody cocktail approach
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 –11 March 2020, https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-genera... [accessed 12 April 2021].
    1. Singh A., Deedwania P., Vinay K., Chowdhury A.R., Khanna P. Is India’s Health Care Infrastructure Sufficient for Handling COVID 19 Pandemic? Int Arch Public Health Community Med. 2020;4:041. doi: 10.23937/2643-4512/1710041. - DOI
    1. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations, https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations [accessed 12 April 2021].
    1. Hotez P.J., Botazzi M.E. Developing a low-cost and accessible COVID-19 vaccine for global health. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2020;14(7):e0008548. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0008548. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Maxwell D., Sanders K.C., Sabot O., Hachem A., Llanos-Cuentas A., Olotu A., et al. COVID-19 Therapeutics for Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Review of Candidate Agents with Potential for Near-Term Use and Impact. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2021;105(3):584–595. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.21-0200. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Supplementary concepts