BioVoice News September 2017 Issue 4 Volume 2 | Page 15

INDIA SIGNS VACCINE DEVELOPMENT TREATY WITH IVI, SOUTH KOREA The Indian Council of Medical Research under the Department of Health Research and the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding with the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), South Korea to collaborate on vaccine research and development. With a long history of scientific collaboration with IVI, India officially became a signatory to the treaty of the Seoul-based international organization in 2012. IVI has 35 signatory countries. With this partnership, India is committing an annual contribution of US $5,00,000 to IVI and joins Sweden and South Korea as financially contributing signatories to IVI. Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Director General of ICMR, said, “We have been working closely with IVI in India for more than a decade now. We are confident that this collaboration will elevate the vaccine R&D capacity at IVI as well as Indian labs and further benefit India’s vaccine industry.” of multinationals whose vaccines are currently priced at more than Rs 3000 per dose for a 3 dose schedule.” Playing the big role globally In an example of India’s show of strength aboard, recently the Pune-based Serum Institute of India acquired Czech biopharma company Nanotherapeutics in a whoppping €72 million deal that increase its injectable Polio capacity by 4 times. That would be a total of 200 million doses by 2019, making it the largest injectable non oral Polio vaccine manufacturer in the BIOVOICENEWS.COM 15