Thailand stands to gain from an information-sharing agreement with Pfizer/BioNTech after preliminary results showing its latest Covid-19 vaccine candidate is 90% effective made headlines around the world on Monday.
Dr Nakhon Premsri, director of the National Vaccine Institute (NVI), told media yesterday that the technology used is similar to that being used in the current collaboration between the NVI and Chulalongkorn University.
"The leap in progress made by Pfizer's Covid-19 project is great news, made even better for us because we are developing our own vaccine based on the same technology. The information sharing deal should help speed up our own development process," he said.
Although Thailand has struck deals with both the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc that will allow it to produce and supply any successful vaccines their projects may yield, it only managed to agree an information sharing pact with Pfizer.
In the Asia-Pacific region, only three countries have supply deals already in place with Pfizer. Japan has secured 120 million doses and Australia 10 million, while China's Fosun has also agreed 10 million doses for Hong Kong and Macau, according to Reuters.
Dr Nakhon, nevertheless expects researchers in Thailand will benefit as the NVI/Chulalongkorn "mRNA-based vaccine" is similar to Pfizer/BioNTech's.
This method works by training the body to recognise and kill proteins produced by pathogens.
Dr Nakhon said Thai researchers are looking forward to finding out more about the proteins and the processes implemented by Pfizer/BioNTech to recognise them.
The world cheered on Monday when Pfizer Inc announced its vaccine, jointly developed with BioNTech SE, was more than 90% effective based on initial trial results.
Yet health experts cautioned that, should it be approved, the vaccine will pose some challenges, especially for hot countries, as the genetic material it is made from needs to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius or below.
According to Dr Yong Poovorawan, head of the Centre of Excellence in Clinical Virology at Chulalongkorn's Faculty of Medicine, the clinical trial of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is inconclusive and more work needs to be done,
The World Health Organization estimates that about 70% of people must be inoculated to end the pandemic, with Asia alone home to more than 4.6 billion -- or three-fifths of the global population.