In a country like India where immunisation needs are huge and maintaining the quality has been challenging due to shortage of cold-chain capacity, innovative technological interventions around thermostability is a definitive solution for low immunisation coverage. The thermostable property of vaccines enables to withstand tough climatic conditions thereby increasing the shelf life of vaccines and bringing down logistics cost by eliminating cold chain, according to experts.

Although India’s immunisation program is globally recognised for providing 37% of the world’s WHO pre-qualified vaccines indigenously, it is home to one-third of the world’s unimmunised children. The gaps in immunisation coverage exist due to the inefficiencies in vaccine management, mostly in logistics and temperature monitoring systems. It takes meticulous planning, strong logistics and cross-functional innovation to transport a vaccine from its manufacturing site to administration in the field.

In the last few years, several new vaccines have been included in India’s Universal Immunisation Programme. However, inefficient supply chain and logistics management system, along with a shortage of cold-chain capacity, are resulting in approximately 25% vaccines being wasted every year. Storing vaccines at incorrect temperatures also leads to loss of quality and efficacy. Transporting and storing vaccines in remote rural areas continues to be a significant challenge.

According to Dr Madhu Madan, Senior Scientist, MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, “Most of the vaccines are stored at temperature of 2-8 degree. The need of the hour is not only the development of novel vaccines, but optimising existing vaccines to better suit the need of populations across the globe. It is about combining the manufacturing aspect with the thermostability aspect so that the vaccines have a longer shelf-value and we are able to have a larger cover of immunisation”.

“Thermostable vaccines are a game changer in today’s vaccine technology where existing vaccines are brought to vaccine vial monitor (VVM) 30 or higher levels, to determine the feasibility of applying innovative delivery technologies. This kind of R&D is needed to make effective vaccines available in limited resource settings, so that they can be more easily used to decrease the impact of vaccine-preventable diseases. By using this technology, Hilleman Laboratories can extend its thermostable formulations to other vaccine makers to help close the immunisation gap in the country,” Dr Madan further said.

Currently, Hilleman is working on the development of thermostable vaccines to allow for greater temperature consistency and less reliance on exact storage timing and refrigeration. In near future, the organisation aims to replicate the achievements and learnings of its research on other vaccine programs for improved affordability as well as increased access.

With an aim to improve cold chain systems to expand effective immunisation coverage and further reduce the number of deaths caused by vaccine preventable diseases, the government has adopted a real-time Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN), an indigenously-developed technology. The system digitises vaccine stocks and monitors cold chain temperature using smartphone applications. The eVIN technology is a prime example of the benefits which can be achieved by integrating low-cost, smart technology into service delivery models.

“Technology and innovation together can bridge the gap between academia and product development by establishing proof-of-concepts for promising new vaccines. With the advancement in biotechnology and organic synthesis a new approach called synthetic vaccine technology has come up in recent past for new and improved vaccine development. At Hilleman Laboratories, we have taken up an organic synthesis approach that will allow vaccines to be produced at a lower cost and least biosafety hazards as compared to conventional vaccines. With this unique research, the risk of handlers and cost of bulk production will go down while the quality of vaccines will improve. This synthetic platform technology will provide a boost to developing country vaccine manufacturers to undertake more affordable next-generation vaccines. This synthetic technology is broadly applicable to several important conjugate vaccines and can also be expanded to non-conjugate vaccines and therapeutics”, says Dr Manoj Kumar, director – R&D, MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories.