‘We don’t have a Team Australia approach’: Vaccine facility rejects plea for help

NSW is scrambling to build a $250 million mRNA facility to produce vaccines against potentially disastrous animal pandemics after being refused access to Moderna’s new taxpayer-funded factory in Melbourne.

The Clayton factory – touted as the southern hemisphere’s only mRNA manufacturing facility and backed by the federal and Victorian governments – opened last month under a $2 billion, 10-year deal with the US pharmaceutical giant.

Tiba Biosciences co-founder Peter McGrath says Australia has an opportunity to create an export industry and associated jobs in manufacturing RNA vaccines.Credit: Steven Siewert

The NSW government’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development says it inquired about using the factory to make mRNA vaccines for animals but was rejected because it is only for vaccines for human respiratory viruses.

The department has funded Boston-based Tiba Biotech to develop mRNA vaccines for animal diseases, including foot-and-mouth disease – an outbreak of which could do enormous damage to the economy. The company says several vaccines are showing promise.

In September 2022, the department’s director of biosecurity, Jim Rothwell, placed a video call and sent a follow-up email to mRNA Victoria, a state government agency tasked with overseeing the development of new medicines and capabilities, asking about using Moderna’s facility to make the animal jabs.

“I rang up mRNA Victoria [in 2022] and said: ‘This is what we’re doing. Could we make vaccine in the new facility that’s been funded?’ They said no. It’s only for respiratory viruses,” he wrote.

The new Moderna Technology Centre at Monash University in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton.

“It was on scoping potential as colleagues rather than a formal direct request to manufacture government to government.

“I think it’s a bit odd that we don’t have access to something that is going to be of benefit to the community that can be used by others – who aren’t Moderna.”

Despite being supplied with the date of the correspondence, mRNA Victoria told this masthead it had never received a direct request to make non-human products at Moderna’s facility.

“Any decision to manufacture – or contract manufacture – a non-Moderna-developed vaccine at the facility will be a matter for Moderna,” a spokesman said.

A spokesman for the federal Health Department echoed that, saying: “The services that Moderna as a private company is able to offer to other potential customers are a matter for Moderna.”

A spokeswoman for Moderna said it was “not a contract manufacturing organisation” and that the Melbourne factory was only licensed for human vaccines, not animal.

“Moderna is an innovation company focused on developing its own pipeline and working with public health authorities on priority pathogens that impact humans,” she said.

The spokeswoman said that while the company had not been approached by Tiba, all mRNA manufacturers had their own processes, and it was not simple to make another’s product in Moderna’s facility. She said Moderna regularly opened its facilities to researchers working on vaccine development free of charge.

The NSW Department of Primary Industries has spent millions of dollars funding Tiba to develop mRNA vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease and lumpy skin disease. The two vaccines are under late-stage development, while one for BDV – a sheep disease – has proven effective in animals, the company says.

Foot-and-mouth is a highly contagious disease affecting cattle, sheep and pigs. Government estimates say the cost of a large outbreak would be about $50 billion. A huge outbreak struck Indonesia in 2022.

But Tiba says it needs access to an mRNA manufacturing facility in Australia to make the vaccines at a commercial scale on our shores.

The Moderna rejection has forced the company and the NSW government to fund the construction of a new mRNA facility to make the animal vaccines – at an estimated cost of $250 million.

Tiba’s Australian-based co-founder, Peter McGrath, said factories like the one in Melbourne should be able to be used by more mRNA manufacturers than just Moderna.

“Ideally, Australia should have a manufacturing capability that could be used by multiple customers, thereby ensuring the facility has ongoing demand outside of epidemic situations,” he said.

“There is an opportunity here for Australia to create an export industry and associated jobs in manufacturing RNA vaccines and therapeutics. Currently, no facility is available in Australia that could support that opportunity at the appropriate scale.”

Rothwell told this masthead that “the horse has bolted”.

The Moderna Technology Centre at Monash University.

“We now have this situation where each state is doing its own thing. We don’t have a team Australia approach,” he said.

“What happens if we get emergency diseases in people or animals that aren’t respiratory illnesses? We’d be high and dry.”

Rothwell said he had been “gobsmacked” by a report in The Age that CSL had offered to build an mRNA facility for a fraction of the price the government had paid Moderna.

University of NSW mRNA expert Professor Pall Thordarson said producing animal and human vaccines at the same plant was unusual but not technically problematic.

“There is no special technical difference but for perception and financial reasons, many human therapeutic manufacturers do not get involved in animal health products,” said Thordarson, the director of the UNSW RNA Institute that is working with Tiba on the animal vaccines.

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