3 Things you must know about Vaccine Research and Development

Vaccine research and development, initiates the purpose of combating deadliest of diseases as per the standards and guidelines adhering to both developed and developing nations. The Vaccine research is based on regional epidemic of a nation.  The Development of the vaccine is initiated with sole purpose of producing an anti-dote for a particular disease. The Research and Development process of vaccine development includes three important factors:

• Identifying Vaccine Research Priorities

Since the research on vaccine has found adequate supports, the demand for independent evaluation has increased considerably. There, now, has to be stringent assessment of priorities, effort coordination for activities optimization and alignment. Hilleman Labs, a vaccine development company, has been helping developing countries fight deadliest of the diseases by offering affordable vaccinations. It has also identified relevant gaps and stimulated the implementation of technical agendas.

• Developing Research standards and guiding principles

Guidelines are necessary for new vaccine candidates, as their course of action is complex and they use multiple clinical demonstrations to target diseases. Certain standards have been defined by WHO such as Quality, Safety and Standards Unit, Harmonized Methods, and tools for comparing research results.

• Research and Product Development Capacity Growth

Many countries have shown interest in developing and producing quality vaccines. The developing nations can utilize the Research and Development capacity of World Health Organization, as its integral project development. The WHO offers clinical guidance support and practice for development of research centers and technology hubs.

The Science of Vaccination- an Insight from Hilleman Labs

Get to know the approach and vaccine research that Hilleman Labs, employs to provide better health care facilities to developing countries.

There is big gap between the healthcare facilities provided by the developing nations and developed nations. Vaccination programs help developing countries, defend deadliest of diseases. Hilleman Labs, a partner of Merck & Co. and Wellcome Trust, have channelized their vaccine research to help people fight and overcome fatal diseases in developing countries. Vaccine manufacturing needs research, ultra-modern techniques, and artisan. The artisans at Hilleman Labs focus on:

·         Diseases of importance to developing countries
·         Transformational technology for vaccine development and administration

The vaccines like rotavirus vaccines, human papilloma virus vaccines, TB vaccines, pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, and Hepatitis A vaccines are developed for diseases responsible for highest mortality and morbidity rates in developing countries. The vaccines are developed and delivered based on disease targets and antigens, which are calculated on epidemiologic data and disease burden. The heat stability, usability, and affordability of the vaccine are improved either by using existing technology or inventing a new one.

The vaccine research model of Hilleman Labs encapsulates the following:

·         Due-Diligence
·         Identify Vaccine Antigen
·         Identify Vaccine Technology
·         Optimization
·         Preclinical Development
·         Clinical Phase I / II
·         Technology Transfer for Manufacturing



The Project selection process:

·         Public health interest (Possible reasons why this vaccine is needed)
·         Technical probability (What is the probability of vaccine’s success)
·         Financial feasibility (Cost and investment involved in vaccine manufacture and licensing)
·         Keeping in mid National Regulatory Authority (NRA) and WHO Guidelines
·         Consulting stakeholders and peer groups

“It is estimated that globally 0.6 million children under the age of 5 die annually due to rotavirus diarrhea and another 2 million are hospitalized. 90% of these deaths occur in developing countries.” –Courtesy: Hilleman Labs.

Public health systems that can ensure fairness in global health scenario will be a reality only through easy and affordable access to life-saving immunization programs. Well equipped with transformational vaccine research technologies, we will deliver new age preventive healthcare to the developing world in the near future.

Our expertise in vaccine research is channelized towards helping people in the developing world to fight the deadliest of diseases with vaccines that are within their reach. A first-of-its-kind initiative, Hilleman Laboratories is an equal joint-venture partnership formed between Merck & Co., a global research-driven pharmaceutical company and Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation dedicated to human and animal health. Headquartered in India, Hilleman Laboratories is an international organization strengthened by the presence of global leadership and scientific team, which is working incessantly to develop safe, effective, affordable and sustainable vaccines for developing countries

Thermo stable Rotavirus vaccine is one of the current projects that Hilleman Labs, has been working on. The research on rotavirus vaccine, examine formulations to improve stability, usability, portability and affordability of thin strips or granules.  Making vaccination a medium to combat deadly diseases helps save lives.

Hilleman Laboratories is a vaccine manufacture  and committed to developing high impact, TB vaccines, Hepatitis A vaccines, affordable vaccines for people in developing countries in an innovative and sustainable manner.

Examine the Rise and Fall of Immunization Cost in Developing Countries and its Usefulness

For the developing countries, vaccines have made feasible some of the greatest public health successes in the last decade. The supply of high-impact Immunization helps avert an estimated 2.5 million child deaths each year. Vaccinesmanufacturing laboratories are striving to spread awareness about the up and coming technologies & processes executed in the field of vaccine development. The process of vaccine development involves high investment costs and the facilities require the optimum use of resources. Apart from the cost, there is no dearth of speculations involved when it comes to acquiring high quality and effective vaccinations for the general public. It also requires adequate research and development, quality control and quality assurance in the field of vaccination. However, the investment cost has been an important aspect to maintain world-class infrastructure for vaccine. As resources and facilities for vaccines manufacturing are available in abundance, on the other hand laboratories have to face a number of problems to initiate a research and development in developing countries. In addition, the world’s vaccine market is very small—below 2 percent of the pharmaceutical market—attracting few suppliers.

It has been examined that the prices of traditional vaccines have decreased significantly. The immunization cost of traditional six vaccines of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), measles, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, oral polio and BCG has shown a radical decrease in cost. Because the fixed costs of development of these vaccines have been covered long ago, and because their production costs have been lowered due to the learning curve and economies of scale, their prices are relatively low.  In the past years, there has been excess production capacity of these vaccines as new producers have entered the market, thus sales at low prices covered the variable costs of producing extra doses of vaccine, and did not require additional capacity.

Hilleman Laboratories is intended to participate actively to develop and optimize vaccines for developing countries to ensure healthy tomorrow while keeping its investment costs in control. The lab understands the constant need of vaccines by developing countries and for this reason puts more emphasis on the supply of high impact immunization for kids and even promotes awareness campaigns in rural areas about how to keep track on immunizationschedule for kids. The lab develops high-impact, thermal stable and cost-effective pneumococcal vaccine and conjugate vaccine for developing countries. Hilleman Laboratories was set up in 2009, the first time a research charity joined hands with a drug maker to develop affordable vaccines to prevent diseases that commonly affect people in low-income countries. The firm has successfully promoted and supplied a heat stable, affordable and easy-to-use rotavirus vaccines used to prevent diarrhoea in children.






Corporate Office and R&D Laboratory

MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories Pvt. Ltd.
2nd Floor, Nanotechnology Building, Jamia Hamdard

Hamdard Nagar, New Delhi – 110062 (India)

Ph: +91 11 30997700 Fax: +91 11 30997711

Website: www.hillemanlabs.org

Ensuring Global Health through Vaccine Optimization for a Better Tomorrow

Development of vaccine is a strategic, slow and complex process that can be initiated by reliable and experienced labs. Over a time the system for developing, testing and regulating vaccine optimization has been modified to ensure improved performance. These days testing labs are adopting updated standards and regulatory policies to develop safe vaccines of high quality which are giving good results. The involvements of certain steps in vaccine delivery are significant to reduce the risks and improve the overall results. The process which has been followed to develop vaccines are being tested, and regulated in a very similar manner to other drugs. In general, vaccines are even more thoroughly tested than non-vaccine drugs because the number of human subjects in vaccine clinical trials is usually greater. In addition, post-development monitoring of vaccines is closely examined by the higher departments of disease control.

Safety is also an important phase in different types of the vaccine development process utilized by numerous labs all across the globe. Proven adverse events from the use of licensed vaccines are rare, and vaccines with known safety problems have been removed from the market. Successful vaccinations are highly effective and used globally in order to ensure critical health aspects with the removal of long medication processes. We have been heard that precautions is better than cure, vaccine is supporting this fact on the whole.

Immunization chart is the best and only way that parents can adopt to reduce the chances of skipping any of the vaccine of their child in the initial years of the birth. This chart includes age, vaccination name and how it is given, that facilitates you to track and not to skip any vaccination of your child and brought consistency.

Apart all the benefits of developing a vaccine, it has some major or minor obstacles that can be broadly classified as economic obstacles, technical obstacles and cultural obstacles. Successful vaccines have the scope of introducing and supporting new programs to deliberately providing positive consequences. Vaccines have helped eradicate the worst infectious diseases in the developed world. Research and development must continue the progress of the past and address those diseases that have eluded the development of effective vaccines and the diseases that continue to devastate regions where vaccines have been unavailable. Research is also needed to improve existing vaccines.

There are certain misconceptions related to vaccination, that it should fulfill a net cost-savings is a major obstacle to vaccine development. As a matter of fact costing of vaccination is one of major obstacle in India or outside. To resolve this with consistent approach governments and individuals should be prepared to pay a certain cost to improve health and avoid suffering. Recently studies shows that vaccine development is hampered by the current pricing structure in the U.S., which for some diseases fails to allow adequate compensation for the companies that develop vaccines in the early years following license. Paying prices for vaccines that take into account their health and lifesaving attributes, would encourage more research, more innovation, and better, safer vaccines.

Qualitative Vaccine Research is an effective way to ensure global health

A lot of medical institutes and laboratories are concentrating on vaccine research to help the nation in achieving vaccine transfer to prevent a number of deadlier diseases. Child immunization is one of the major areas where more focus is needed by the laboratories and the experienced medical research centres. It has been seen that globalimmunization is the matter of great concern when it comes to promoting global health on a larger scale. Besides this one cannot overlook the fact that with each passing day the requirement of initiating the idea of protecting children from contracting diseases such as diphtheria, smallpox, polio, cholera, typhoid and malaria through adopting  better-quality immunization methods.

Promoting vaccine research is one of the major challenges arising in health sector faced by the developing countries. For decades, experienced researchers and doctors have contributed to spread education and awareness on various vaccines like TB vaccine, hepatitis vaccine and HIV vaccine. However with passage of time it has become the struggle as lot of barriers are taking shape that certainly reduced the chances of getting the right kind of research measures. Problems are even arising due to the growing population in rural areas as it doesn’t seem to be realistic to enhance the quality of life in rural or backward areas of developing countries.

According to the recent research vaccine delivery done by various laboratories for the child immunization has become the prominent way to cope with the growing number of diseases. In addition, it adds to the growth of the society and can contribute to the growth of future generation in terms of facilitating healthy lives. Injecting the lives of children through immunizing them on time is indeed a best approach to initiate vaccination of high quality and efficiency. This can be done through involving in various global immunization campaigns and awareness campaigns. As we all know that children are most vulnerable because their immune systems are practically defenseless against the poisons in the vaccines. They have a lot going against them since their mothers do not pour on immunity through breast milk because they were vaccinated and no longer make certain antibodies. The fact is that the human immune system has been designed to protect us from even deadly illnesses but the key here is natural immunity. Vaccines, on the other hand, use synthetic chemicals to build artificial immunity. They work on the assumption that natural immunity is not good enough. While doctors are undertaking research on vaccines they make sure that the vaccine should pass various quality and sensitivity tests to ensure safe and effective vaccine delivery. This further includes that vaccines should pass the tests and it cannot be proven safe until they are given to human beings for the first time. But this would turn them into human 'guinea pigs' and it is not possible to predict what reactions they will have. This way the best researches can take place while keeping all the positives and negative effects in mind, it can lead to better deployment of factors that are responsible for the research.

Development of Vaccines in India – Supporting the Growth

Development of vaccines has been a matter of concern for the number of laboratories in India, every year research labs in India are investing in the process of vaccine development and child immunization in order to ensure maximized health scale. As we are witnessing the era of health revolution, routine child immunization has played a significant role in preventing childhood deaths and disability; thousands of children in India continue to die from vaccine preventable diseases each year. According to a recent report, Hilleman Laboratories will be investing 90 million pounds (nearly Rs 650 crore) in seven years to develop vaccines, including one to treat diarrhea, for which it will conduct research in India.

There are a number of health institutions that are readily preparing immunization chart for children from 1 month to 6 years of age group, this will provided to parents so that not even a single child immunization goes skipped and parents can keep a track deliberately. As per most of the medical institutions over the world, rotavirus diarrhea leads to annual deaths of five to seven lakh children all over the globe, out of which one lakh are in India alone. Therefore, it’s good to be aware about the situations happening in the world rather than becoming a victim of such fatal disease. Other is the name of the disease hepatitis a and hepatitis b, hepatitis Avaccine cost is quite expensive in Indian market, but still you will get it at lesser prices from some of the charitable hospitals and medical institutes. Hepatitis B vaccines are being inclusive in the national vaccination schedule.

An overview has been made about the disease in the conference - Hepatitis B is a disease of the liver caused by Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. HBV is transmitted through contact with infected blood or body fluids, unprotected sexual intercourse and the perinatal route but not through casual contact. About two billion people worldwide have been infected with the virus, an estimated 360 million live with chronic infection, and at least 600,000 people die annually from acute or chronic consequences of Hepatitis B, such that Hepatitis B is a major public health problem worldwide.

India has restored its image internationally when it comes to the successful development of vaccines and immunization policy. Vaccine policy of India is not rigid and streamlined the practice vaccines in India, recently in December, 2012 World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the vaccine policy adopted by India. With this approval India became the first country in 2012 to pass the stringent levels of seven indicators that is put forward by the WHO that is made much more stringent every time conducted by a team of 12 international experts headed by a member of WHO.