Israel's Oramed gets Vietnam pre-order for 10 mln COVID-19 vaccine doses

Oramed Pharmaceuticals

29/12/2021 11:00

By Steven Scheer
    JERUSALEM, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Israel's Oramed
Pharmaceuticals  ORMP.O  said on Wednesday its Oravax Medical
unit signed a deal with Vietnam's Tan Thanh Holdings for the
pre-order of 10 million doses of its oral COVID-19 vaccine that
is in clinical trials.
    The agreement gives Tan Thanh, a drug distributor, the right
to sell Oravax’s oral vaccine in development throughout the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, Oramed said.
    "The parties have agreed to negotiate follow-on orders
potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars," it said,
adding the ASEAN region has a prospective patient population of
about 660 million.
    Nadav Kidron, chief executive of Oramed, said its oral COVID
vaccine is undergoing Phase I clinical trials and results should
be available in early 2022. The vaccine has been shown to work
in animal tests, he said.
    As a Communist country, Kidron said, Vietnam could decide on
a short Phase II trial and then give emergency authorisation.
"Potentially, marketing could be very, very fast," he told
Reuters. 
    As long as Phase I results are as expected, Kidron believes
more countries will be interested since the new technology is
not likely to require as many boosters as current vaccines. "The
idea is that you take it and that's going to be your dosing and
you're done," he said.
    Last week, Nikki Fried, Florida's Agriculture Commissioner,
said that given the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, she was
pushing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to accelerate the
review of oral vaccines as an alternative to injections.
    "Countries like the U.S. and Israel (which uses the Pfizer
vaccine) ... may end up being behind because if developing
countries step up their game they may be having the newest
technologies available to them before the Western world," Kidron
said.   

 (Reporting by Steven Scheer; editing by Barbara Lewis)
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Messaging: steven.scheer.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net;
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