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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.

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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

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Supplementary concepts