China’s Walvax Soars on Plan to Build Covid-19 Vaccine Plant in Beijing
Ma Chenchen
DATE:  Dec 28 2020
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
China’s Walvax Soars on Plan to Build Covid-19 Vaccine Plant in Beijing China’s Walvax Soars on Plan to Build Covid-19 Vaccine Plant in Beijing

(Yicai Global) Dec. 28 -- Shares in Walvax Biotechnology surged almost 10 percent today on the news that the Chinese drugmaker will build a Covid-19 vaccine factory in Beijing to produce a chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine, similar to the one being produced by UK pharma giant AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and the first in China.

The firm’s stock price [SHE:300142] closed up 4 percent today at CNY38.63 (USD5.91). It had earlier in the day reached CNY40.68.

The new plant will be located in the capital’s Daxing Biomedical Industrial Park and should be finished by the end of next year, the Kunming, southwestern Yunnan province-based company said yesterday. It is expected to produce 150 million doses a year and capacity can be rapidly expanded if need be, it added.

The vaccine, jointly developed by Tsinghua University and Tianjin Medical University, uses a genetically modified version of an adenovirus that normally affects chimpanzees to introduce a part of the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus into the human body and trigger an immune response which can build up into full immunity.

It has been demonstrated to confer protection to rhesus monkeys but has yet to be tested on humans.

The research team will apply to start clinical trials at the end of this month. However, the tests will have to mostly be done abroad as China does not have enough Covid-19 patients, Zhang Linqi from Tsinghua’s School of Medicine said.

Adenovirus vector vaccines have advantages over other jabs, such as those that use inactivated or killed viruses and messenger RNA, Zhang said. For one, they have less major side-effects. They are also easy to store and can be kept for 60 days at temperatures of between two and eight degrees Celcius, making them cheaper and more convenient to use than other candidates.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor

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Keywords:   New Product,R&D,Vaccine,Mass Production Base,COVID-19,Pandemic Control,Beijing,Walvx Biotechnology