Australian company offers rival bid to produce mRNA vaccines from 2023

A Melbourne company has told the federal government it could deliver 100 million mRNA vaccines from early 2023 by expanding an existing production line in a bid that rivals a plan from CSL.

Biotech company IDT has put forward a proposal to start production within 18 months and offer population-wide inoculation against COVID-19 and its variants in a project backed by scientists and industry.

mRNA vaccines could be produced in Melbourne within 18 months under a new proposal.Credit:Getty Images

The proposal steps up competition with biotech giant CSL to build a domestic mRNA vaccine facility with federal support to develop new medical treatments and prepare for future waves of the coronavirus.

But the deal depends on whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Industry Minister Christian Porter can reach an agreement with vaccine producers such as Pfizer and Moderna to license their mRNA technology to an Australian partner.

The details of the bid, confirmed to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, meet the government’s key objective of building domestic capacity to produce enough vaccines in a year to cover the entire population.

“We are quite confident that we can meet the population-scale requirement. Our bid includes a commitment to start delivering 100 million doses within 18 months,” IDT chief executive David Sparling said.

“We are working with a globally known equipment provider that has built these sorts of facilities in other parts of the world in the recent past.”

While the government has kept its plans confidential while it considers the competing bids, the details confirm earlier estimates that it is not possible for Australia to gain a domestic mRNA capacity any earlier than 2023.

CSL, which posted revenue of $12 billion last year, has proposed a facility near the University of Melbourne to start producing mRNA vaccines within 18 months, followed by an “industrial scale” facility near Tullamarine. This timeframe also depends on a government agreement with Moderna or Pfizer.

IDT, a listed company with $14 million in revenue last year, calls instead for a federal commitment to expand an existing production line already used to make pharmaceuticals and located near Monash University.

“What we think differentiates our proposal is that we’re committing a brownfields site to this, so it does not involve a new facility build, which can sometimes take several years,” Dr Sparling said.

“This is an established site with an established equipment train in it, which we will expand, and I think that gives us a material time advantage.

“We’ve formed an alliance with numerous research bodies around the country, including Monash University, and that builds an ecosystem for mRNA.”

Mr Porter is in talks with Moderna about whether it would build its own facility in Australia or strike a technology transfer agreement with local companies to produce its mRNA vaccines here, reducing the country’s reliance on imports.

Moderna announced an agreement with the Canadian government last week to manufacture its vaccines in that country, without saying where the facility would be built or when it would start production.

“The company is in discussion with other governments about potential collaborations built on a similar model,” the company said.

Mr Porter oversees a $1.5 billion manufacturing policy that could be used to support new vaccine facilities, with the additional incentive of long-term federal contracts for vaccine supply.

IDT has an alliance with the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which is developing its own mRNA vaccine in a program led by Colin Pouton, a professor of pharmaceutical biology.

Like other bidders, IDT declined to reveal the financial details of its bid on the grounds this would be subject to commercial discussions with the government.

Dr Sparling said the goal was not only to produce mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 but to develop a research capacity around Monash University to use the technology for cancer and other diseases.

“The applications are way beyond COVID-19 and the current pandemic. That’s one of the things we’ve tried to push forward in our approach to market â€" the breadth of that ecosystem and building sustainability into our approach,” he said.

“So we’re not just building a facility that’s ready for the next pandemic, we’re building a facility that can translate this really good research into a bunch of other applications.

“That includes oncology, inflammation, ophthalmology, and all sorts of other research.”

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David Crowe is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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