Bharat Bio Consortium Gets $14m Grant for Chikungunya Vaccine

HYDERABAD: The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced that it is partnering with vaccine maker Bharat Biotech’s consortium to advance the development of a Chikungunya vaccine and agreed to fund up to $14.1 million (around 106 crore).

In a statement, Bharat Bio said CEPI will fund the consortium for vaccine manufacturing and clinical development of a two-dose live-inactivated vaccine (BBV87) against Chikungunya.

The consortium will further be supported with a grant of $2 million from the Indian government’s Ind-CEPI initiative, which will fund the setting up of GMP manufacturing facilities for the vaccine and the subsequent manufacture of clinical trial materials.

The partnering agreement, in addition to manufacturing, will finance a multi-centre phase 2/3 adaptive clinical trial to be conducted by Bharat Bio’s consortium partner International Vaccine Institute (IVI) in Colombia, Panama and Thailand.

These trials are expected to provide crucial data about the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine candidate, said the company.

“We are witnessing that today’s neglected diseases are susceptible to become tomorrow’s pandemics and with this collaboration, we have the opportunity to tackle them proactively,” said Dr Krishna Ella, managing director, Bharat Biotech. “We are hopeful that with accelerated clinical development in endemic countries, the candidate CHIK vaccine will be successful.”