The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing $1.15 million in funding for PopVax, a biotech company based out of Hyderabad. The money will be put toward research PopVax says has the potential to make mRNA vaccines and therapeutics more readily available in developing countries.
PopVax founder and managing director Soham Sankaran explained in a statement that the mRNA vaccines developed for the Covid-19 pandemic need to be stored between -20 degrees and -80 degrees Celsius, so developing countries without the supply chain infrastructure to sustain below-freezing storage temperatures can’t rely on them. PopVax’s research aims to produce delivery formulations that can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures.
“This will enable rapid, population-scale distribution of new mRNA vaccines and therapeutics to combat infectious disease in developing countries — both potential future pandemics and the deadly pathogens already among us,” Sankaran said in his statement.
This latest funding award comes as a result of an October 2023 project agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It builds upon the work started with a 2021 agreement that provided $100,000 to finance early exploration into thermostable mRNA delivery formulations. PopVax designed the novel lipids and polymers that make up the formulation tested in an animal study, which launched in September of this year.
