Called “The World’s COVID-19 Vaccine,” a vaccine developed by the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Baylor College of Medicine is low-cost, safe and effective.
Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, and Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD, Co-directors of the Vaccine Center, did not patent the vaccine technology so that it would be more accessible and reach people in low- and middle-income countries.
Close to 100 million doses of vaccines based on the Baylor-Texas Children’s technology have been administered in India and Indonesia. Named Corbevax in India, the vaccine was developed and manufactured at large scale by Biological E. Limited at their Hyderabad-based plants. Named IndoVac in Indonesia, the vaccine was produced by Bio Farma and was the first COVID-19 vaccine that was certified to meet halal requirements, potentially increasing acceptance by the Muslim-majority population.
In collaboration with Texas Children’s Global Health, a training program for scientists from Botswana was launched and a partnership established with ImmunityBio to use the technology in building vaccine production and testing capacity in Botswana.
The Vaccine Center also continuously worked to update the vaccine technology in response to the many variants of the virus.
“Beyond COVID-19, we’re also looking at how we can develop and prepare a vaccine prototype that could be used to reduce the burden of death and severity of disease from the emergence of new viruses from the family of coronaviruses,” Dr. Bottazzi said.
Dr. Bottazzi is Senior Associate Dean and Dr. Hotez is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor. Both are Professors of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology and Microbiology, and Dr. Bottazzi is the Division Chief of Pediatric Tropical Medicine. They want to increase global preparedness for the future.
“We think there will be another big pandemic before the end of the decade,” Dr. Hotez said. “Remember, COVID-19 is the third major one — after SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002 and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) in 2012.”
Dr. Hotez discusses the continuing need for new vaccines and the dangers of the anti-vaccine movement in a new book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning, due out in September 2023.
In recognition of their efforts to make life-saving vaccines widely available, Dr. Hotez and Dr. Bottazzi have received numerous accolades, including:
Individually, Dr. Hotez received:
Dr. Bottazzi, who grew up in Honduras, received:
In addition, the vaccine research team was named the Best Academic Research Team by the Vaccine Industry Excellence Awards.