The Ignite Life Science Foundation has awarded a research team from the Indian Institute of Science (Bengaluru) and the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (Faridabad) its first scholarship award for research on “pandemic preparedness”.
The team consists of Professor Raghavan Varadarajan, Dr. Mrinmoy De and Dr. SiddharthJhunjhunwala (IISc) and Dr. Amit Awasthi (Institute for Translational Health Science and Technology-Faridabad).
The grant, the amount of which has not been disclosed, will support research to develop, for the first time in India, the technology platform and reagents needed to develop, manufacture and test novel mRNA vaccines, ILSF said.
“We hope their work will lay the foundation for India’s ability to respond quickly to future pandemics and improve our ability to respond to new varieties of SARS-CoV-2,” it said.
“The grant is valid for three years and will fund research into the development of platform technologies for the development of mRNA vaccines,” said a statement on Monday by the ILSF, which was founded by professional scientists, academics and entrepreneurs.
According to Professor Shahid Jameel (Member Scientific Advisory Board, ILSF), mRNA vaccine development technology is vital for India to provide a quick and effective response to future pandemics and the successful completion of this project will create much needed skills in mRNA Vaccine enable development in India.
“In addition to developing a vaccine against new variants of SARS-Cov2, the researchers will also try to develop methods of making thermostable RNA vaccines that would be vital for resource-poor tropical regions of the world,” he said.
