Amer (Girona) (EFE).- The executive vice president and director of R&D and Registries of Hipra, Elia Torroella, highlighted this Thursday that the Spanish vaccine against covid is “of a new generation” and responds to current needs in the face of the pandemic.
Torroella, who has acted as the company’s spokesperson after the European approval of the Bimervax vaccine against covid-19, has described the day as “very special and emotional” for the entire team of these laboratories based in Amer (Girona), after the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended the approval of Bimervax.
“This is thanks to the effort, commitment, knowledge, enthusiasm, perseverance and optimism of the Hipra team together with many researchers and research centers, hospitals, health professionals and expert professionals in many areas,” he stressed to Efe. Hipra’s spokeswoman, before the press conference that the pharmaceutical will hold this afternoon.
He has also had words in this first reaction to the European approval for the institutions that have been with Hipra “since the beginning of the project”.
The first bivalent recombinant protein
Torroella’s message has focused on this characteristic of the new generation vaccine, as it is the first “bivalent recombinant protein to be approved in the European Union and in the world.”
“It fits perfectly with the needs we have to continue protecting ourselves from covid-19,” Torroella added once the EMA’s approval was known.
Among the thanks, he referred “in a very special way to the volunteers in the clinical trials who, despite having access to authorized vaccines, believed in the project and decided to contribute and participate in the development of this new vaccine in Europe.” ”.
At the moment, thirteen countries on this continent have signed a joint purchase agreement and, with the approval of the European Commission, it will be time to know the amounts of doses required.
We will also now proceed to obtain the necessary approvals to offer Bimervax to other countries outside the European Union.
In addition, the vaccine, within the framework of the RBDCOV project, is being studied as a booster dose for immunocompromised people and, shortly, studies will begin in children and adolescents under sixteen years of age.
From the company, they admit in any case that “leaving now and not a few months before” has not made things easier “and the delay has had a significant cost”, but they are convinced that Bimervax “contributes a lot to the control of covid- 19”.
The vaccine comes out with the booster indication to be administered after an mRNA. In Europe, the majority of the population has received at least one such dose.
More than 50 years of experience
Hipra is a biotechnological pharmaceutical company with more than fifty years of experience devoted to research, a field to which it allocates 16 percent of its staff and 10 percent of its turnover.
The company has its own subsidiaries in forty countries and eleven diagnostic centers, three for research and development and six for production that are strategically distributed throughout Europe and America. Its distribution network spans the globe.
Its team is made up of more than 2,400 people and the work that now concludes with the approval of this covid vaccine began in 2020, in the context of a pandemic, by assuming the challenge based on long experience in prevention.
The Division of Human Health was launched in 2021, and its extensive prior history in the Animal Health field initially placed it in a unique position to understand and prevent zoonotic diseases.
All this work reaches a turning point with the approval of Bimervax, but Hipra continues to be immersed in major projects such as research to develop a new vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes bronchiolitis and pneumonia. EFE
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