University of Chile and Italian Reithera join forces to produce vaccines in Parque Carén

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – With 7,000 square meters thanks to the public and private contribution, the University of Chile, together with the Italian pharmaceutical company Reithera are promoting the construction of the space in the Carén Park that belongs to the university to develop there the vaccine of the European company that today is in the phase of verification or Phase 3 by the authorities of that country.

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The company’s executives hope that the building will have the same characteristics as the one in Rome, where research will also be carried out, and knowledge can be generated as an experience for the University of Chile itself and other institutions that carry out scientific research and innovation.

The rector of the University of Chile, Dr. Ennio Vivaldi Véjar, indicated that the alliance is fundamental to generating its own capacity. The country will not have to go out to buy vaccines for diseases such as Covid-19 and others.

While highlighting the work done by the health authorities to obtain vaccines to protect the population in the context of the pandemic, the academic authority said that it is necessary to have a national industry that avoids any problem of availability or lack of resources to obtain the medicine abroad.

He also stressed that the work with Reithera is to obtain knowledge for Chilean scientists. “What we are talking about here is not simply to reach product delivery stages but to be able to account for the entire production line.”

Vivaldi added that “Chile has very high-level, renowned scientists and this has also been demonstrated in these months. I believe that Chilean research is spectacularly efficient. It is a country with an exceptional relationship between its scientific production and its investment, and I believe that it is key that this scientific production can give rise to all the stages” of the process.

For his part, the coordinator of the Italian delegation and director of business and regional operations of Rosiglioni Impianti, Valerio Branchi, emphasized that the alliance can be projected as a regional development pole for the production of vaccines, not only against Covid-19 as is expected in the first stage.

Branchi pointed out that the current vaccine being evaluated in Italy has had very positive results during the first two phases. In his opinion, “this same platform can be used in the development of other generic vaccines against viral infections. With the collaboration of the University of Chile, we can acquire scientific and technological knowledge that would allow a faster consolidation of the necessary skills for the eventual production of the Reithera vaccine as well as other drugs based on the use of viral vectors.”

Meanwhile, the Vice-Rector for Research and Development, Dr. Flavio Salazar, pointed out that during the pandemic, Chile has managed to obtain vaccines from different laboratories around the world, but this is an opportunity that would allow us to have some 100 million doses of our own not only for our country but also to supply the rest of the nations in the region.

“There are countries like ours that have been fortunate to have a certain availability of vaccines, but there are large parts of the world, including our region, which for various reasons cannot count on the number of doses necessary to cover the needs of their population,” commented Salazar.

In this sense, the university authority recalled that this issue “has been discussed in international organizations, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, in which it is recommended, as a matter of strategy and global integration, that countries begin to have their own capacities to somehow insert themselves in all these processes of production of vaccines and other types of biologicals.”

The plant planned for Parque Carén is expected to have the support of the private and public sectors and the state. It aligns with the alliances that countries such as England, Australia, and Senegal have been making in this area in recent times.