Will ‘open-source’ vaccines narrow the inequality gap exposed by Covid? | Financial Times

"The Cape Town initiative is part of a new push by global health authorities, academics and philanthropists to address that and promote alternatives to “Big Pharma’s” business model, which relies on legally enforceable patent protections to raise investment to fund new drugs. The chronic lack of access to vaccines in the developing world has emboldened some researchers to embrace the concept of “open-source pharma” — an idea modelled on the free software movement, which encourages collaboration and sharing to improve code.... For months, the battle for access was centred on intellectual property rights. But the so-called Trips waiver — proposed by India and South Africa in 2020 — which would allow for flexibility in patents for the manufacture of vaccines, is still being discussed at the World Trade Organization. The hub, in contrast, aims to make the technology accessible to poorer nations and also train qualified staff to produce vaccines locally without breaking any intellectual property rules.... Even if it passes all of its regulatory hurdles, Afrigen’s will not be the first open-source vaccine to go into people’s arms, although it would be the first mRNA one to do so....   But the promise of the open-source model is, according to its backers, unprecedented. “A year ago we thought that if only we could get Moderna to give us the tech, the recipe, we would fast-track [vaccine production],” says Afrigen’s Terblanche. “Today, I am in a way grateful that they didn’t, because a turnkey tech transfer from a company like Moderna or Pfizer, you get a box, you sit in the box, and your freedom sits only in that box. The scientists would have learned to bake,” she says. “Now they have learned to make.” "