[Reporter’s View] Vaccine sovereignty only during epidemics

Vaccine sovereignty only comes to the fore during epidemics

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency recently announced that it will support messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines in preparation for the next pandemic.

 

The government will support research and development from preclinical to Phase III trials, focusing on companies with the potential to localize mRNA vaccine platforms.

 

Candidate companies include GC Biopharma, Samyang Holdings, and ST Pharm, which have a history of developing COVID-19 vaccines.

 

The rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in a short period of time has raised the need for domestic vaccine development.

 

Securing vaccine sovereignty is being discussed again following the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022.

 

The government has consistently claimed that it will localize COVID-19 vaccines.

 

However, the government gradually reduced the scale of support with the easing down of the pandemic.

 

In fact, there were vaccine candidates from the domestic pharmaceutical and biotech industry that entered Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, but some abandoned the development of new drugs due to high costs incurred during late-stage clinical trials.

 

Genexine, which started COVID-19 vaccine development, abruptly discontinued its R&D in 2022 after conducting Phase II/III clinical trials.

 

The company cited oversaturation of the market and failure to receive foreign approvals, but also cited a lack of government support.

 

Genexine reportedly had close to KRW 10 billion in government funding.

 

In June, Eubiologics also canceled plans for domestic clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine.

 

Various domestic pharma and biotech companies, including Eyegene, ST Pharm, GenOne Life Science, Auratis, Telcon RF Pharm, and Quratis, have been working on COVID-19 vaccines, but their movement has been slow since COVID-19 turned into an endemic.

 

4 years have passed since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but minimal progress has been made in the domestic vaccine development scene has been minimal.

 

SK Bioscience's vaccine SKYCovione and Celltrion's treatment Regkirona have been developed for COVID-19, but they lack utility.

 

SKYCovione and Regkirona are not able to respond to new COVID-19 mutations.

 

Many infectious disease experts emphasize the need for government support for domestic companies to develop local vaccines.

 

This is because the pharmaceutical industry has to invest a lot of money in research and development (R&D), while the expected return is small.

 

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, the R&D budget for infectious diseases reached KRW 438.5 billion in 2021 and KRW 508.1 billion in 2022, when COVID-19 was at its peak.

 

However, the budget dropped to KRW 413 billion in 2023, the year the pandemic began, and did not even reach KRW 300 billion in 2024.  While the budget for infectious disease R&D has declined, the cost of purchasing overseas vaccines has snowballed.

 

The government reportedly spent more than KRW 7 trillion on overseas COVID-19 vaccine purchases from 2020 to last year.

 

As for COVID-19 treatments, the budget for purchases this year is KRW 179.8 billion, but the rising number of patients has led to the need for additional funding.

 

The COVID-19 drugs being procured are all new drugs produced by foreign companies.  It is said that it has become difficult for the pharmaceutical industry to develop vaccines as the scale of the government’s project has shrunk and support reduced.

 

This is in contrast to the trend overseas.

 

The U.S.

 

has invested KRW 41 trillion in mRNA platforms to help Pfizer and Moderna commercialize their vaccines.

 

In China, CSPC Innovation Pharma developed an mRNA vaccine, SYS6006, in March last year and received approval from its country's health authorities.

 

In Japan, Daiichi Sankyo also secured vaccine sovereignty in September last year with the development of its mRNA vaccine, Daiichirona.

 

Daiichi Sankyo is continuing its research on targeting the dominant variant through its mRNA platform.

 

The Korean government decided to support the specific field of mRNA upon the rise of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

 

The timing is indeed a bit late, as it seems like Korea is following the steps of neighboring East Asian countries that already succeeded in developing mRNA vaccines.

 

Couldn’t they have prepared for the next pandemic by increasing the budget in the post-pandemic stable state?

 

Vaccine sovereignty cannot be secured by mending the barn after the horse is stolen.