Panacea Biotec: Making The Vaccine Shift

The company divested its pharma portfolio in India to fund a new thrust in vaccines against pandemic outbreaks.

- Joe C. Mathew

WHILE COVID-19 TURNED OUT to be a one-off bump in revenue opportunity for many vaccine makers, the pandemic period will remain a decisive phase in the three-decade-old history of Delhi-based vaccine manufacturer, Panacea Biotec, for a different reason. It was the time when the company re-drew its plans, reshuffled businesses, and began to focus more on vaccines for the future.

“This is Panacea 2.0.,” says Rajesh Jain, chairman and managing director, Panacea Biotec. The company divested its India-focused pharmaceutical brand portfolio in March 2022 to generate funds for investments in new vaccine development projects. The result: Panacea is developing a vaccine platform that can address pandemic outbreaks of the future.

The plan is to develop a single vaccine to tackle Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Covid-19, and similar viral disease outbreaks. The company has also invested in developing a first-of-its-kind vaccine for another major problem — the Dengue outbreak. The vaccine candidate, undergoing clinical trials now, promises protection against all four serotypes of the Dengue virus. Other vaccines are also in the pipeline.

“We are preparing a vaccine platform that can be quickly adapted to any kind of SARS-COV-2 variants and other betacoronaviruses. It is a collaborative effort of Panacea, Government of India (Translational Health Science and Technology Institute or THSTI, Faridabad) and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Similarly, our Dengue vaccine candidate, a preventive single dose across all four serotypes, is developed in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, USA,” says Jain.