Australia's first locally made COVID-19 mRNA vaccine candidate is set for clinical trials

Victoria's acting premier James Merlino announced on Sunday his government had allocated AUD 5 million from a AUD 50 million mRNA research fund to help the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences manufacture doses of its mRNA vaccine candidate for trials, ABC News reported.

The COVID-19 vaccine is being developed by Monash University, who is partnering with the Doherty Institute to run trials looking at both the mRNA and a protein vaccine at the same time.

Monash University's Colin Pouton, who is leading the research team, said the trial of an mRNA vaccine presented an opportunity to equip manufacturers with the ability to make mRNA vaccines.

"So during this period of making a clinical trials product for Phase I, we'll be skilling up those companies to start getting into manufacturing so that they could manufacture other products and other COVID products going forward," he said.

He explained the vaccine under development was a "variant vaccine," modelled from the strain first detected in South Africa, adding that trials should start in October or November and would run until all the data was collected for a year.

Pouton said if commercial agreements were made with Pfizer or Moderna, Australia could start manufacturing those vaccines at CSL.