Serum Institute — Past, Present & the Future
Today, we’ll discuss a company that has helped almost every household throughout the country by providing its latest product. It has been in the business for nearly five decades, yet it wasn’t known until the start of this pandemic. This company has not chosen to go public even after 50 years of being a part of the industry. Yes, we are talking about none other than Serum Institute of India, the most prominent vaccine manufacturer globally, by the number of vaccines produced.
Introduction
Situated in Pune, Serum Institute of India, or SII for short, is an Indian biotechnology and biopharmaceutical company. It is India’s №1 Biotech Company, with Adar C. Poonawalla serving as its CEO. Its motto is to manufacture low-cost, high-quality vaccines and is one of the largest suppliers of vaccines to over 170 countries. According to estimates, about 65% of the children in the world receive at least one vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute. Imagine the impact it has worldwide.
Its intellectual property includes 48 registered patents and two registered trademarks. SII Pvt. Ltd. has made two investments, with the most recent in X-Vax Technology, to finance a vaccine against Herpes. So, it’s least to say that the company has diversified itself from the beginning by manufacturing vaccines starting with tetanus, snake antivenom, DPT, Measles, Mumps, BCG, Swine-Flu vaccines and, latest one, for Covid-19. Let’s discuss more about the history of this company.
Background
Cyrus Poonawalla founded SII in 1966 with highly qualified doctors who set out to produce immunobiological medicines, which were imported into India at high prices. Among the first products manufactured in large quantities was the tetanus antitoxin. Serum Institute expanded to include different types of anti-viral and anti-bacterial vaccines and launched the world’s first Rabies Human monoclonal antibody, Rabishield. It was a first-of-its-kind product for passive immunization against Rabies.
Serum Institute of India has faced some challenges, too, in the way. In 2015, when there were no vaccines available for dengue in India, they had sought fast-track approval from the Indian drug regulator to launch a treatment for it, but that did not come through. So, finally, in 2017, they exclusively partnered with U.S. firm Visterra for the same purpose.
Importance
The company’s Philanthropic philosophy, that still exists, has been to bring down the prices of newer vaccines such as the Hepatitis-B vaccine so that not only Indian’s but the entire underprivileged children of the world are protected from birth onwards.
With the licensure of additional facilities, SII has the flexibility to produce vaccines in more than one plant, enabling them to improve the response time to cater to any international emergency or outbreak. Their vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute are accredited by the WHO, which speaks for itself.
Currently, SII has a 60% market share by volume. They claim to spend 800–900 crores in R&D per year for new developments. At one time, they had thought of taking the company public to fund some significant acquisitions but changed course when the deals fell through.
Serum Institute planned to enter European markets by 2020 and also start some product filings in the U.S. to boost revenue. Even though Covid-19 shook the economy last year, it had managed to be one of the most profitable Indian companies in recent years.
In 2019, they opened a new facility in Pune, the largest globally, producing half a billion vaccine doses a year and creating about 3000 jobs. Product approvals from regulatory authorities and subsequent product launches are expected to play a significant factor in driving their growth in the global vaccines market.
Presently
Seeing the impact of how the pandemic took the world by storm, everyone had gotten a sense of how unprepared the healthcare systems were to take on this virus. But, despite the scenario, many companies came forward to try and prepare a vaccine to ease this situation, SII being a major one for India.
For this, they had partnered with the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which is developing a drug in partnership with Oxford University. This was decided to be branded under the name COVISHIELD in India. They also reached an agreement with Novavax for the production of their Covovax vaccine. They had also partnered with U.S. biotech firm Codagenix for a single-dose intranasal Covid-19 vaccine, committed to bringing a better solution to the market. They were even experimenting with two self-vaccine candidates at the time. Even Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded $300 million to SII to fund vaccine doses for low & middle-income countries.
Although such deals gave them a higher chance to bring an effective vaccine to market, one sign of this partnership was that millions of Indians would get their hands on COVID-19 vaccine shots produced by Serum well before the end of 2020.
In September 2020, during the AstraZeneca trials, a volunteer in the U.K. trial was being diagnosed with transverse myelitis. After that, the U.K. government put the vaccine trial on hold due to a suspected severe adverse reaction. This caused a delay in finalizing vaccines in India. As of 2020, the company is the world’s largest vaccine producer by the number of doses produced, manufacturing around 1.5 billion vaccine doses each year.
Coming to the date of 12th Jan of this year, it was the day three temperature-controlled trucks rolled out of the Serum Institute gates shortly before 5 am and left for Pune airport from where the vaccines were flown across India.
Future
According to Adar Poonawalla, realistically, for the whole world, for everyone on this planet, or at least 90% to get the Covid-19 vaccine dose, it’s going to be done at least by the year 2024. He has set up a new company, Serum Institute Life Sciences, in Pune, India. It will be building a first-of-its-kind manufacturing facility and research and development labs costing 300 million dollars. Once established, it will be capable of producing 1 billion vaccine doses when it opens.
The Serum is also ambitious in its journey. They expect the company’s revenue to reach twice the current in the next five years, driven by product launches and entry into regulated markets. With a capacity to produce more than 1.5 billion doses, it is looking to achieve a revenue of Rs 10,000 crore by 2022.
Soon, SII could become the world’s first company to produce a ‘Green Vaccine.’ The primary vaccine firm is also aspiring to be the first `Net Zero’ pharma company in the world.
Follow us on Medium to be notified of new posts! You can also check us out at Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast and on any platform of your choice!
