Rwandan-owned Akagera Medicines and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) have entered a new partnership of $1.46 million (approx. Rwf1.83 billion) to improve vaccine delivery and accessibility in Africa.

The partnership announced on December 19, will see CEPI provide the financial and technical support to demonstrate the pre-clinical proof of concept of Akagera Medicine’s innovative lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and modified mRNA for the development of a multivalent influenza vaccine.

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Officials say that the outcomes of this partnership could better prepare the world for future epidemic and pandemic threats by addressing the limitations of frozen storage, shelf life, and lower toxicity of mRNA vaccines and different drugs.

Daryl Drummond, Chief Science Officer at Akagera Medicines, said the goal of the institution is to create medicines that lead to a world free of tuberculosis (TB), meaning improving efficacy, shortening the duration of treatment, optimising drug interaction, eliminating toxicity, and lowering the costs to patients and society.

"We also intend to complete the development of our vaccine delivery system in 2025 that can be used for TB, Lassa fever, HIV, COVID, influenza and other infections. We are very excited that we’ll be bringing our first clinical trial to Africa starting in the first half of 2024,” he added.

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The New Times understands that the institution could, potentially, use the recently inaugurated BioNTech vaccine manufacturing facility for their work of producing mRNA vaccines, with preliminary discussions underway.

Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said: "As we reflect on the critical role of mRNA vaccines in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s evident that improvements are needed to make the technology more accessible, particularly for people living in low-resource settings.”

He noted that Rwanda is a regional leader in health innovation and has made great progress in effectively translating such innovation to address public health challenges.

CEPI aims to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biological countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats so they can be accessible to all people in need.

Regis Rugemanshuro, CEO of the Rwanda Social Security Board, the majority owner of Akagera Medicines, welcomed the partnership emphasising RSSB’s aim to make productive investments from the contributions of Rwanda while making a long-lasting social impact.

He added that Akagera Medicines will be pivotal in promoting health resilience in Africa and addressing the gap of the fact that only three per cent of pharmaceuticals and one per cent of vaccines needed by Africans are produced on the continent.

"This funding forms part of CEPI’s programme to advance novel RNA vaccine platform technologies for emerging and select endemic infectious diseases, which could offer substantial advantages over existing mRNA technologies, such as multivalency, improved immunogenicity, storage and stability, productivity, response time, and cost-of-goods.”

Rwanda continues to make steps towards becoming a health hub on the continent by building an ecosystem that seeks to address healthcare concerns, including the BioNTech vaccine manufacturing plant, African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, and African Medicine Agency, among others.