Globe BioTech gets govt nod to produce COVID-19 vaccine!

Government has given green signal to Globe Biotech Limited all necessary permission permission to produce Covid-19 vaccine, Bangavax, necessary for clinical trial. The Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) gave permission on December 28 last, said Dr Asif Mahmud, Research and Development In-charge of Globe Biotech Limited on Wednesday.

“Globe Biotech Limited has received licence for production of Covid-19 vaccine. We will submit a trial protocol to the Bangladesh Medical Research Council (BMRC) next week seeking ethical permission. We are hopeful that we will be able to go for clinical trial next month,” he said. “Then trial will start.”

If everything goes smoothly and as per plan it would not take more than six months to introduce the vaccine in the market, he said.

Globe Biotech is the only Bangladeshi company to develop vaccines against the coronavirus epidemic.

Initially called ‘BanCovid’, the company in December changed the name of its vaccine candidate to ‘BangaVax’.

The experimental COVID-19 vaccine features in the World Health Organization’s list of draft landscape of candidate vaccines.

Globe had announced the development of the candidate in July last year. In October, the company said the vaccine proved to be “effective” and “completely safe” after trials on rabbits and mice.

Globe Biotech, the only Bangladeshi company that has claimed progress in developing a Covid-19 vaccine, assigned ICDDR,B as a contract research organisation (CRO) to start the human trial procedures.

But, on December 2, it announced cancellation of agreement citing ICDDR,B’s delay for conducting human trials of their vaccine.