LONDON - A prominent British laboratory is forming a special partnership that would sidestep the drug industry to sell a potential vaccine against the coronavirus without profits or licensing fees in Britain and in low- and middle-income countries.
The British laboratory, at Imperial College London, could alter that landscape, in part because its technology has the potential to develop a vaccine that is cheaper and easier to manufacture than others, said Dr Robin Shattock, the lead scientist on the project. "Somebody who's developing a product that's going to be of very high cost will actually ultimately lose out if the high-volume market doesn't support that," Dr Shattock said.
To make the vaccine as widely and cheaply available as possible, Dr Shattock said, Imperial College is creating what it calls a"social enterprise" - a special-purpose, for-profit company chartered to sell the inoculation.