Road map priority for locally made COVID-19 jabs

Scott Morrison’s $1.5bn manufacturing strategy will prioritise domestic development of mRNA vaccines under the government’s medical manufacturing road map.

Industry Minister Karen Andrews. Picture: Matt Taylor

Scott Morrison’s $1.5bn manufacturing strategy will prioritise domestic development of mRNA vaccines, like the Pfizer jab being used in the national rollout, under the government’s medical manufacturing road map.

Industry Minister Karen Andrews said the government had completed an audit identifying several Australian companies with mRNA production capability and was working with them to “explore if that capability could be scaled-up”.

The government’s medical manufacturing road map, setting-out two, five and 10-year goals, will be used as a blueprint to ramp up production of medicines, commercialise products and operations and fast-track their integration into domestic and global supply chains.

Writing for The Australian, Ms Andrews said Pfizer’s successful mRNA vaccine had “sparked a lot of discussion about Australia’s capability to produce these ­cutting-edge types of treatments”.

“The reality is producing mRNA vaccines at scale is a brand new challenge the entire world is grappling with,” she wrote.

“But just as we did during the height of the pandemic with manufacturing surgical masks and ventilators, we’re not taking ‘that’s impossible’ for an answer.

“We’ve been exploring practical options to mobilise the capability of local businesses and res­earchers to future-proof our na­tion when it comes to vaccines.”

Ms Andrews on Friday will launch grant applications under the $1.3bn Modern Manufacturing Initiative, the centrepiece of the government’s strategy, which will “guide government and industry investment”.

The medical products road map, drafted by an expert panel, will build on capacity and support development of smart monitoring devices and diagnostics, personalised implants and bionics, high-value pharma­ceuticals, biologics and comple­mentary medicines, mRNA vaccines, regenerative medicines and genomics and digital integrated products.

Messenger RNA vaccines (mRNA) are a new type of vaccine developed to protect against infectious diseases. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mRNA vaccines “teach our cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response inside our bodies”.

“That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies,” the CDC said.

Cochlear chief Dig Howitt, who sits on the medical manufacturing taskforce, said “Australia has global leaders in medical product manufacturing but with our strong medical research capability, we can and should be creating more. As we move into the post-COVID economy, global competition for the jobs, exports and capability created by medical manufacturing is heating up.”

The three top commercialis­ation challenges facing Australian medical manufacturers are identified as “difficulties in translating research into competitive products, obstacles in integrating into local and international supply chains and challenges in establishing the conditions that enable collaboration,” the road map said.

The medical products sector supports 41,000 jobs and is one of the nation’s largest exporters, via medical technologies and pharm­a­ceuticals. The road map said market capitalisation of publicly listed companies was $179bn in 2019.