The first World Bio Summit (WBS), co-hosted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) and the World Health Organization (WHO), launched on Tuesday at the Grand Walkerhill in Seoul. The event runs through Wednesday this week under the theme, “The Future of Vaccine and Bio-health.”

During his speech at the opening ceremony, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized that expansion of local production and strengthening local regulatory capacity were crucial to reduce health inequities among countries.

As a good example, he cited the WHO’s collaboration with Korea’s MOHW which led to an establishment of a WHO global biomanufacturing workforce training hub in Korea earlier this year in February where training programs facilitated by the International Vaccines Institute (IVI) have already begun.

“We also established a mRNA technology transfer technology hub in South Africa to build capacity in mRNA vaccine production in low- and middle-income countries for Covid-19, malaria, tuberculosis and cancer,” Ghebreyesus said, “Consequently, these hubs are now operating in 15 countries worldwide to better respond to health emergencies.”

While IVI Director General Dr. Jerome Kim acknowledged Korea as the leading donor to COVAX, he stressed the importance of continued investment in this fund. "Although COVAX fell short of  its goal of delivering 2 billion doses in 2021, it is still a good initiative and should not be discarded but needs to be improved through greater investment because equity has a great cost to society."

Dr. Kim added, "Vaccines don’t save lives but vaccinations do so we also need to strengthen health systems around the wold."

Later in the CEO session, biopharmaceutical CEOs all shared a similar message of  collaborations being key to respond faster to the next pandnemic and referenced their efforts to meet CEPI's mission to produce vaccines in 100 days.

MSD's President of Emerging Markets, Jan Van Acker remarked, "We believe Korea could be the bridge between Asia and the developed world because of its highly educated workforce and the way the MOHW has showed leadership to address the Covid-19 pandemic."

Merck's Head of Business Development and Sustainability Meeta Gulyani also echoed similar sentiments, "We are committed to building innovation in the APAC region and Korea, and will invest deeply in this by working with multilateral agencies like WHO and regulatory authorities to push for open trade of biopharamaceuticals and goods can flow freely for effective response and fair distribution."

Moderna's representative in the CEO session also shared that more existing technologies need to be implmeneted to improve acessibility and availability like micro needle patch and drones to  put more vaccines in arms.

Additionally, SK Bioscience's CEO Ahn Jae-yong signed a $140 million agreement with CEPI to develop mRNA vaccines to its pipelines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), cytomegalovirus (CMV) and anti-cancer vaccines. SK Bioscience is the first to participate in CEPI’s "Development of RNA Vaccine Platform Technology and Vaccine Library for Emerging Infectious Diseases.”

Resembling the Convention of the Parties (COP) of the bioworld, the WBS gathered international leaders committed to enhancing global health, to review key innovations from the Covid-19 pandemic and strengthen global health security through new research and development collaborations.

Accordingly, heads of international organizations and government officials from countries participating in the WHO mRNA technology transfer hubs in Africa, Asia and South America together with leaders of top biopharmaceutical firms like Moderna, Pfizer, SK Bioscience, MSD, Biovac and others will all convene for this two-day event.

Meanwhile, the second day will continue with a full-day agenda encompassing a myriad of topics including R&D investment strategies, stabilizing global supply chains of raw materials for vaccines, global diagnostics development trends, global regulatory cooperation on vaccines and biologics and more.