Head Researcher Reveals Issues Facing Merah Putih Vaccine Development

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Head of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Laksana Tri Handoko, on Wednesday revealed that the home-grown Covid-19 vaccine named the Merah Putih Vaccine is facing a number of issues that mainly lie on the development team, production equipment, and testing facilities. 

According to Handoko, he and his team have conducted an in-depth evaluation regarding this matter since May this year and just realized that the main problem facing the team is that prior to them, there had never been an Indonesian team of researchers creating a vaccine from scratch. 

“Is this wrong? Surely not, in fact, we can use this Covid-19 pandemic as a valuable lesson for us to enter vaccine developments,” said Handoko in a webinar on the research on August 18.

The second issue is that Indonesia needs to provide small-scale good manufacturing practice (GMP) for standardized limited production, which could then be tested in pre-clinical and clinical trials. He explains that this aspect is needed for standardized productions. 

“Here’s the issue, there is no such equipment,” he added. 

The former head of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said the pharmaceutical industry actually is in possession of such equipment that can be used for two platforms; inactivated and protein recombinant. However, it would be near impossible to borrow it from state-pharmacy Bio Farma as doing so would hinder their production.

Another issue prolonging the Merah Putih vaccine development is the absence of a large-scale animal BSL-3. He assures that these problems are being solved by BRIN management. 

Read: Eijkman: Merah Putih Vaccine to Be Tested Against Delta Variant

MOH KHORY ALFARIZI