Nepal keen to run human trials of Bangladeshi Globe’s COVID-19 vaccine

Nepal has offered to carry out trial COVID-19 vaccine developed by Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company Globe Biotech, which was recently added to the World Health Organisation’s list of draft landscape of candidate vaccines.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 22 Oct 2020, 05:57 PM
Updated : 22 Oct 2020, 05:57 PM

Its Ambassador in Dhaka Banshidhar Mishra made his interest public at a media briefing at the company’s headquarters at Tejgaon on Thursday.

A physician by training, Mishra said he looked into the details of the vaccine, named BANCOVID.

“We are interested in taking the vaccine at the moment. If they (Globe) are successful, we will be able to acquire it through the G-to-G method,” he said.

“If the government of Bangladesh agrees, Nepal is also keen to hold human trial of the vaccine.”

According to Md Harunur Rashid, the chairman of Globe Pharmaceuticals Group of Companies Ltd., they have sealed an MoU with a Nepalese company for the sale of 2 million doses of BANCOVID before using the vaccine for human trial.

“A contract with Nepal’s Anmol Group was inked. Apart from that we’ve had orders of a total of 20 million doses from several other countries. We will supply it abroad after meeting Bangladesh’s demands.”

Globe is the only Bangladeshi company on the worldwide COVID-19 vaccine development scene and listed on the WHO's draft landscape of Covid-19 candidate vaccines on Oct 15.

WHO is keeping track of vaccines being developed around the world. Of these, 42 vaccines are at clinical trial stage, which is preceded by pre-clinical trials with an existing 152 vaccines on the list at the moment. As many as three vaccines developed by Globe Biotech are on this list.

On Jul 3, Globe Pharmaceuticals announced their attempts a  producing a vaccine and on Oct 5, the company claimed that the vaccines proved to be ‘effective’ and ‘completely safe’ after trials on rats.

The company will now apply for clinical trials on humans to the Bangladesh Medical Research Council or BMRC.