During The World Vaccine Congress in Washington this year we were excited to speak to several of our wonderful vaccine experts to hear about their work and insights. One such expert is Dr Ed Kelley, Chief Global Health Officer at ApiJect, formerly Director for Service Delivery and Safety for WHO, who joined us at the event for a session in the Vaccine Delivery workshop: “Redefining Access: Prefilled Injectables for safe and efficient vaccinations”. It was fantastic to hear from Dr Kelley and we hope that you enjoy the interview!
Prefilled injectables
Our first question considered Dr Kelley’s session on the value of prefilled injectables in “safe and efficient” vaccinations. Dr Kelley begins by generously commenting on the benefits of pre-Congress workshops and the importance of considering investment in delivery! Within the notion of delivery, Dr Kelley presented on ApiJect’s approach. ApiJect states that their device combines “two trusted technologies”: the Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) aseptic drug packaging process, and a pen needle-style needle hub. Dr Kelley indicates that this technology can produce 30,000 doses an hour, “at very high speed and at very low cost”.
Vaccine concerns: what are the next steps?
We then asked Dr Kelley about his considerations or concerns for vaccines as we continue to emerge from a global pandemic and vaccine innovation is moving at a remarkable speed. He identifies two aspects:
“One, COVID itself was a big push on this new line of vaccines around mRNA, DNA vaccines, and other innovations there for more rapid development…because we had that investment in mRNA and more rapid production, they’ve pushed themselves to be more rapid in their own production, so I think the whole industry has moved in terms of more rapid response on vaccines.
But, the challenge is that COVID also gave us the biggest hit to routine vaccination globally…we’re about to miss the window to vaccinate those kids globally, which leaves us with decades of vaccine-preventable outbreaks around the world.”
Dr Kelley and his team are focused on vaccine delivery, so they want to “get [effective vaccines] out to the places that they need to get to”.
Development to delivery
Our next question was about the discrepancy between investments in vaccine development and vaccine delivery: what does ApiJect want to see from the vaccine community?
“We’ve spent billions, rightly so, on new and better vaccines.”
However, Dr Kelley and his colleagues are concerned about “how many new vaccines are coming”. He considers the new malaria vaccine, a “massive breakthrough”, which looks like it will demand seasonal boosters. Providing these boosters to “all of the children in malaria-endemic Africa, every year” is a “massive delivery challenge”.
“So we’re spending money on new vaccines, but we’re spending almost nothing on these leaky pipes of vaccine delivery that have existed for almost 30 years…more investment needs to be done on that type of innovation.”
ApiJect benefited from US Government funding during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Dr Kelley identifies “growing interest” in this area. Yet, it’s still “a fraction” compared to vaccine development: “we just need to have that better balance”.
Why WVC?
As usual, we conclude the interview with a question about the event, and why Dr Kelley and his team were joining us.
“The opportunity to be here with a mix of public sector leadership as well as private sector leadership… those types of public and private sector mixes are clearly how we’re going to solve some of these.”
Some of the sessions on the agenda also appealed to Dr Kelley, including those that covered pandemic preparedness. Finally, he was also starting to plan his next Congress with us, in Barcelona later this year! It’s great to hear that Dr Kelley and team will be joining us there; you can get your tickets for this event here.
We’re grateful to Dr Kelley for his time and, if you want to hear more from him, encourage you to check out his “From the Front Line” podcast here.
For more conversations with our experts from the Congress in April do make sure you subscribe for weekly updates here!
