LIPI Eyes to Submit Merah Putih Vaccine Seeds Early Next Year

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) is targeting to hand over its Covid-19 vaccine seed dubbed the 'Merah Putih' (Red and White) to the vaccine industry or factory in early 2022.

“What will be submitted to the industry is a mammalian cell clone that meets the standards of cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice),” said the institute’s Head of the Laboratory for Applied Genetic Engineering and Protein Design, Wien Kusharyoto, to Antara on Tuesday, March 16.

However, he said that his side has not known yet whether or not the vaccine candidate will be submitted to state-owned pharmaceutical holding firm Bio Farma.

According to Wien, Bio Farma will also wait for the preclinical test results before willing to accept the vaccine candidates.

LIPI is developing Merah Putih vaccine seeds using fusion recombinant protein. However, the recombinant protein subunit vaccine being developed by the institute was different from the vaccine seeds developed by Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology.

Researcher at the Biotechnology Research Center of LIPI, Ratih Asmana Ningrum, said her side has created a synthetically different protein design which basically aims to increase the immune response when the vaccine is inoculated.

Read: Updates on 'Merah Putih' COVID-19 Vaccine

ANTARA