How do you make a 250x better vaccine at 1/10 the cost? Develop it in India.

By Abhishaike @ 2025-02-09T03:54 (+3)

This is a linkpost to https://www.owlposting.com/p/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine

(I made a vaccinology/policy-based podcast! A very long one! If you'd like to avoid the summary below, here is the Youtube link and Substack link.).

Summary: There's a lot of discussion these days on how China's biotech market is on track to bypass the US's. I wondered: shouldn't we have observed the exact same phenomenon with India? It has seemingly all the same ingredients: low cost of labor, smart people, and a massive internal market.

Yet, the Indian biotech research scene is nearly nonexistent. Why is that?

To figure it out, I had a two-hour discussion with Soham Sankaran, the founder and CEO of PopVax, an mRNA vaccine development startup based in Hyderabad. Amongst those in the know, Soham is well understood as one of the most talented biotech founders in India, and his company has had a genuinely incredible underdog success story. This story is still being written, but there's good reason to be bullish, given that PopVax has an (in mouse) influenza vaccine that is 250x better than its competitors, multiple large research collaborations, and their first upcoming US based phase 1 clinical trial being fully sponsored and conducted by the NIH.

We discuss so many things. Including policy prescriptions for Indian R&D, why PopVax's vaccines are so good, how machine-learning is changing vaccine development, and much more. Links below!

Substack: https://owlposting.com/p/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine
Youtube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CHokQ5dMxHQ
Jargon explanation: https://owlposting.com/p/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine?open=false#%C2%A7jargon-explanation
Transcript: https://owlposting.com/p/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine?open=false#%C2%A7transcript
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine-at-1-10-the/id1758545538?i=1000688682418
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5WcFoMDkxpQt4ULT1k5gm4