Hyderabad: The Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and city-primarily based pharma group Hetero have agreed to make more than one hundred million doses per year of the world’s very first registered COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V, Hetero mentioned on Friday.
The parties intend to start off the production of Sputnik V in the starting of 2021, by way of Hetero’s biologics arm Hetero Biopharma,” it said in a press release.
The Gamaleya Center in Russia and RDIF announced on November 24 positive results obtained during the second interim data analysis of the largest double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled Phase III clinical trials in Russia’s history involving 40,000 volunteers.
Currently Phase III clinical trials are approved and are ongoing in Belarus, the UAE, Venezuela and other countries, as well as Phase II-III in India and requests for more than 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V vaccine came from more than 50 countries.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said “We are delighted to announce the agreement among RDIF and Hetero that will pave the way to production of the secure and hugely efficient Sputnik V vaccine on Indian soil.
The vaccines interim clinical trial benefits show 95 per cent efficacy on the 42nd day soon after the very first dose.
B Murali Krishna Reddy, Director International Marketing, Hetero Labs Limited, mentioned “We are pleased to collaborate with RDIF as a manufacturing partner for the most anticipated Sputnik V vaccine for the treatment of Covid-19.
While we look forward to the clinical trial results in India, we believe that manufacturing the product locally is crucial to enable swift access to patients.”
Reddy additional mentioned the collaboration is yet another step towards Hetero’s commitment in the battle against Covid-19 and realizing the objective of ‘Make-in-India’ campaign as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Earlier in September 2020,Dr. Reddy’s and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund entered into a partnership to conduct clinical trials of Sputnik V vaccine and its distribution in India. As aspect of the partnership, RDIF shall provide one hundred million doses of the vaccine to Dr.Reddys upon regulatory approval in India.