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How a scrappy African start-up could forever change the world of vaccines

Afrigen is the linchpin of global project to use mRNA technology to empower low-resource countries to make their own vaccines against killer diseases from TB to HIV. What will it take to succeed?
Gerhardt Boukes, chief scientist at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, formulates mRNA for use in a new vaccine against COVID-19. The company — based in Cape Town, South Africa — is the linchpin of a global project to enable low- and middle-income countries to make mRNA vaccines against all manner of diseases.

Imagine a world with vaccines not just for global threats like measles and COVID but for all the diseases that afflict people in the world's poorest countries – illnesses that are largely ignored but devastating, such as tuberculosis, dengue and lassa fever. And even for the ongoing epidemic of HIV.

Better yet, what if these new vaccines were actually invented and manufactured in the very countries where they are most needed. These are countries currently so shut out of global vaccine production they were forced to wait last in line for COVID vaccines. Yet if and when the next pandemic hits these nations wouldn't just have access to new vaccines, they could be at the forefront of creating them.

That's the vision that a tiny biotech startup in South Africa appears on track to make real. The company – Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines – is

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