Malaysia imports 100% of its vaccines. Australia provided vaccines and technical assistance to support Malaysia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the pandemic, this support pivoted to meet Malaysia’s ambitions at developing local capacity for vaccine development, including a national pilot-scale vaccine manufacturing facility at the Malaysia Genome and Vaccine Institute (MGVI). The National Vaccine Development Roadmap was launched by the Malaysian Government to enable access to locally manufactured vaccines and focus on Halal-certified production. This project will assist the MGVI to build human capabilities to manufacture vaccines locally. CSIRO will support the development of processes to produce a microbial cell vaccine candidate, selected by the Ministry of Health (MOH). The selected target will enable hands-on training to step Malaysian scientists from MGVI through the “valley of death” (translation from a research and development candidate through to a manufacturable product). This will build process development capabilities, from conception and execution, through to delivery of manufacturable methods, to enable the production of complex, high-quality therapeutic products and enable first in human clinical trials.
