COVID-19 tales: ‘Our scientists brought live virus from Pune by road’

Dr Krishna Ella

Maker Of India's First Indigenous Covid-19 Vaccine

Dr Krishna Ella, 51, Hyderabad
Chairman and managing director, Bharat Biotech International Limited

Born in a farmer's family, I decided to study agriculture and wanted to be a farmer. But I became a molecular biology scientist. In the year 1996, I returned from the US, where I had gone on a scholarship, ready to take entrepreneurial risks.

My journey began as the head of a startup in 1995, when I conceptualised a Hepatitis vaccine, an unmet need in India, and successfully delivered the vaccine at $1. Since then, we have delivered over four billion doses of vaccines in over 123 countries, with a portfolio of 145 global patents. Our manufacturing facilities are approved by USFDA (United States Food and Drug Administration), KFDA (Korea Food & Drug Administration), and WHO (World Health Organisation). Today, we are also proud to have the first Biosafety Level 3 production facility in the world.

The inspiration to return to India, and do something for the motherland came from my mother, and my wife Suchitra. The years I spent at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, were inspiring. Listening to thought-provoking lectures by the National Science Academy winners and Nobel laureates, nurtured my strength as a scientist. I also realised that if we have to deliver the benefits of science to society, I had to become an entrepreneur with a difference - I had to be innovative.

I've always believed that science can be leveraged to solve public health problems. My mission is to identify neglected diseases that impact the developing world and find solutions for them.

So, when the pandemic struck last year, I was confident that we can develop a Made In India vaccine with our years of knowledge in developing viral, bacterial, and recombinant vaccines.

COVAXIN is wholly-indigenous, developed under public-private partnership, and built on a vaccine platform technology that has established its safety and efficacy for several years.

Our initial days were hugely challenging, right from the time we sent our scientists, who took great risks to bring the live virus from Pune by road. Our 2,500+ employees worked under extreme pressure as we were in complete lockdown and were also racing against time.

From the very start, our mission was to develop an indigenous vaccine that is safe, efficacious, and will be a universal solution to fight the pandemic. COVAXIN is a highly purified and inactivated two-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, manufactured in a Vero, cell manufacturing platform with an excellent safety track record of more than 300 million doses.

There were concerns regarding the safety of our vaccine. But I'd like to tell everyone that we focused on conducting the studies under the strictest clinical trial protocols mandated by the world and the Indian Ministry of Health. We also ensured that the clinical trials were done by a third party. The outcome of our pre-clinical trials and our Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials has proven that our vaccine is safe and efficacious. Also, analysis from the National Institute of Virology indicates that vaccine-induced antibodies can neutralise the UK variant strains and other heterologous strains.

The development of COVAXIN is a matter of great pride for us, not just at Bharat Biotech, but also for our country and humanity. As a company, we believe in the scientific rigour of what we do, as it affects the lives our patients.

$1
Cost at which he sold the Hepatitis vaccine in 1995