Globe Biotech to produce vaccine candidate for clinical trial

Bangladeshi drugmaker Globe Biotech Limited is set to begin production of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate for clinical trial after getting the greenlight from the authorities.

Globe received the licence to produce the vaccine on Dec 28 but the matter had not been disclosed to the media at the time, said Asif Mahmud, in-charge of the company's research and development department, reports bdnews24.com.

"We have received the licence to produce the vaccine for clinical trials. I will now submit our protocol to the Bangladesh Medical Research Council for clinical trials next week. We hope to start the clinical trials within this month,” he said.

Globe Biotech is the only Bangladeshi firm in the race to develop an effective and safe coronavirus vaccine, seen as the only way out of the pandemic crisis that has claimed at least 1.86 million lives and infected more than 86.46 million globally.

Globe Biotech is the only Bangladeshi company in the running 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 rats.