News

Worth a shot? The economics of the race for a vaccine

Avalia's CEO Dr Shivali Gulab shares insights into the economics of COVID-19 vaccine development efforts alongside Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Harris, one of the New Zealand’s leading vaccine efficacy and safety experts, based at the University of Auckland.

 

Excerpt from original article, published 26 June 2020

 

All over the world, scientists, pharmaceutical executives and government officials are working feverishly with one goal in mind - finding an effective vaccine for Covid-19 and then making billions of doses of it.

Click to view full original article by Peter Griffin, Two Cents Worth and published by Radio New Zealand

 

Ultimately, Petousis-Harris sees the effort to develop Covid-19 vaccines as having potential to change how vaccine development in general is undertaken, which may address the fragile nature of global pandemic preparedness efforts.

 

Changing the model

“One of the good things that comes out of this, I hope, is that the vaccine development landscape is forever changed,” she said.
“Because we had a model that wasn’t working when it came to lower and middle income countries but also emerging diseases. We could never be reactive enough.”

At Avalia Immunotherapies, which is working on treatments for chronic hepatitis B, malaria and virus-associated cancers, Dr Shivali Gulab and her team now also have Covid-19 in their sights.

“We’ve been thinking about taking a broader approach, looking at past coronaviruses like MERS, the first SARS coronavirus, and thinking more broadly about a pan coronavirus candidate,” she said.

“It’s early days, but we are looking at a potential international collaboration there.”

 

Click to listen to the related podcast