LG Chem announced on the 7th that it has signed a contract with UNICEF, an international aid organization, to supply the polio vaccine’Ufolio’ for a total amount of 80 million dollars (about 87 billion won).
Ufolio is a next-generation dead vaccine that has undergone an additional process of chemically removing the pathogenicity of the virus using an attenuated virus (a virus with weakened toxicity). The safety advantage is greater than that of existing live vaccines.
Most of the recent occurrence of polio is estimated to be due to the virus remaining in the manure of children taking live vaccines mixed with drinking water and spreading to local communities.
LG Chem received PQ approval from the WHO at the end of December last year, the first in the world as a’Sabin IPV’, which is a mandatory screening for the supply of a vaccine to the International Aid Organization.
Starting next month, it will start supplying to more than 70 countries around the world, mainly in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
With this contract, LG Chem supplied more than 20% of UNICEF’s total procurement, and quickly entered UNICEF’s top 3 polio vaccine supplier. By 2022, it plans to double the production capacity of the portfolio.
Earlier, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation highly evaluated LG Chem’s capabilities, and has provided a total of $576,000 (about KRW 63 billion) for the portfolio and the portfolio-based 6-valent vaccine project since 2017. The product commercialization was successful by shortening the development period from nearly 10 years to 6 years.
“LG Chem has played an important role as a major global supplier of polio vaccines through the establishment of a global cooperation model with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UNICEF,” said Sohn Ji-woong, head of LG Chem’s Life Science Division.
[사진=김성훈 기자]
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