Panacea Biotec gets $20 million loan from US government for hexavalent vaccine capacity expansion, ET HealthWorld

New Delhi: Panacea Biotec on Thursday said the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), has agreed to provide a long-term loan of up to $20 million to the company for capacity-expansion of its hexavalent vaccine.

DFC’s financing will enable Panacea to expedite completion of the ongoing expansion and supply the hexavalent vaccine to United Nations (UN) agencies for childhood immunisation globally.

Panacea Biotec is expanding manufacturing capacity for drug substance antigens used in its hexavalent vaccine EasySix to meet future demand from U.N. agencies and public health organisations.

The World Health Organisation and Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation approved adoption of this hexavalent vaccine in the global immunisation program. Following this, Gavi and the Pan American Health Organisation also adopted the hexavalent vaccine. UNICEF forecasts the demand for a wP-IPV-based hexavalent vaccine for Gavi countries to be 19 million doses in 2025 and over 100 million doses by 2030.

Panacea developed the world’s first whole-cell pertussis(wP) and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)-based, fully liquid hexavalent (six-in-one) vaccine called EasySix. The vaccine was launched in India in March 2017. The vaccine protects children from diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influensae type B (Hib) which causes pneumonia and meningitis and polio.

Currently, the routine immunisation involves taking pentavalent (5-in-1) and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) separately, the hexavalent which includes IPV leads to less vaccination sessions and higher coverage.

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