Sanofi to invest 400 million euros in a mRNA vaccines facility

The French drug giant and its British counterpart GlaxoSmithKline surprised investors and customers late last year when they announced a one-year delay to the launch of their joint COVID vaccine, based on a more conventional technology.

Reuters

June 29, 2021 / 01:54 PM IST

Sanofi will invest about 400 million euros ($476.4 million) in research and development of next-generation vaccines using mRNA technologies, which proved their efficiency in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

The French drug giant and its British counterpart GlaxoSmithKline surprised investors and customers late last year when they announced a one-year delay to the launch of their joint COVID vaccine, based on a more conventional technology.

Sanofi has since pledged to help Pfizer and Moderna manufacture COVID-19 shots in an effort to help meet the huge demand for the U.S. drugmaker's doses.

Sanofi added on Tuesday that its "mRNA Center of Excellence" will bring together around 400 employees, and was expected to produce a minimum of six clinical candidates by 2025.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA technologies demonstrated potential to deliver new vaccines faster than ever before", said Jean-Francois Toussaint, global head of R&D at Sanofi Pasteur.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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