ALERT: Patent free COVID vaccine from Texas proves innovation does not require obscene drug pricing

[egbertowillies]

It is not necessary for drug prices to be ridiculously high to create innovation for drugs. Peter Hotez & his Texas team proves it.

https://egbertowillies.com/2022/01/01/alert-patent-free-covid-vaccine-from-texas-proves-innovation-does-not-require-obscene-drug-pricing/

[usaf-vet]

1. Not on second of what the video would suggest we were about to see. People in lab coats telling...

.... use about their research!

[Hoyt]

2. Get the point, but I think the Pifzer, Moderna, J&J vaccines were priced fairly. All under $20.

[pnwmom]

3. This is a related piece by the WA Post.

While it is true that the academic researchers themselves won't profit, Baylor College will get a fee -- and the company Biological E has a "financial interest" in the success of the vaccine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/30/corbevax-texas-childrens-covid-vaccine/

By Adam Taylor
December 30, 2021 at 8:03 a.m. EST


For some vaccine developers, the coronavirus pandemic has had a silver lining in billions of dollars in profits. But a new vaccine rolling out soon in India is taking the opposite approach: Its developers are getting zilch.

“We’re not trying to make money,” said Peter Hotez of the Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development. “We just want to see people get vaccinated.”

On Tuesday, the Indian government granted emergency approval to a vaccine manufactured by the Hyderabad-based company Biological E. This “second generation” coronavirus vaccine was developed by Hotez and his longtime collaborator Maria Elena Bottazzi. It was then licensed to Biological E. through a commercialization team at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where both developers also work.

Biological E. has ambitious plans to produce more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine in 2022. Hotez and Bottazzi won’t personally get a penny from it, but their employer Baylor College will get a fee.

SNIP

Joseph Osmundson, a virologist at New York University, criticized the high hopes for Corbevax, given the lack of public data from Phase 3 clinical trials. “It’s health care for lower- and middle-income countries that we would never accept here,” Osmundson said.

James Krellenstein, co-founder of the health-equity organization PrEP4All, noted that unlike Texas Children’s Hospital, Biological E. has a financial interest in the vaccine. “Maybe this vaccine will be great. Maybe it won’t,” he said. “But science, especially when it involves public health, is based on objective analysis of open data, not trusting the word of a vaccine manufacturer with a vested interest in the underlying product.”