“Corona Vaccine Development Shortcut” … Pour 54.1 Billion Won Into Monkey Experiments

54.1 billion won.
This is the size of the budget that the party government decided to secure through the last third additional rehabilitation budget and the main budget next year to expand the experiments with primates (monkeys). The reason Green Light went into the primate experiment budget expansion is that the primate experiment is attracting attention as a shortcut to developing a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) also designated primate testing as an essential element in all clinical stages when developing a COVID-19 treatment or vaccine.

The Korea Bioscience and Biotechnology Research Institute, which has the National Primate Center as a research institution and the Primate Resource Support Center as a supporting institution, estimates that an additional 24.4 billion won will be needed to expansion of primate breeding and testing facilities and primate protection. At the beginning of last year, when the Corona 19 incident began, a budget was applied on behalf of the ‘future technological development of infectious diseases’, but it was not reflected in the first and second supplementary administrations, but 17.5 billion won was reflected in the third supplementary administration. In addition to the 6.9 billion won in the 2020 budget, which was not reflected in the supplemental budget, the Democratic Party plans to set an additional 29.7 billion won budget to build a new primate research facility. . During the 2015 MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) infection, the need to expand the primate testing infrastructure was raised, but this story has not been found since the early end.

Democratic Party member Han Joon-ho, member of the Committee for Communication and Dissemination of Scientific and Technological Information of the National Assembly, said: “The development of a vaccine for the 19 crown incident in an urgent period should not be delayed due to to problems like the lack of facilities and the exhaustion of the budget “. We will be prepared for expansion ”.

May 2, 2017 National Primate Center at Korea Bioscience and Biotechnology Research Institute, Ochang-eup, Cheongju-si, Chungbuk. The center, the largest in Korea, owns and researches 400 primates such as monkeys. Freelancer Seongtae Kim

The primate experiment is a research procedure that verifies the safety of a new drug using monkeys before it is marketed to minimize the side effects of vaccines and treatments in humans. In Korea, there are 400 monkeys at the National Primate Center (Ochang, Chungbuk) in operation since 2005, and 600 monkeys at the Primate Resource Support Center, which opened in Jeongeup, Jeollabuk-do in 2018. The main ones Species are rhesus monkeys and crabs imported from China and Southeast Asia. The academy who wanted to remain anonymous said: “There were about 50 monkeys a year that are typically used for research, but the number of monkeys used has increased significantly since the government announced in March that the expansion of primate experiments to exceed Crown 19 “The unit cost of importing a monkey is approximately 5 million won. The total budget for owning a monkey, including handling fees, etc., is said to be about 25 million won.

Primate infection model for the development of a vaccine for the treatment of COVID-19 [사진 한국생명공학연구원]

The budget is expected to be used first to expand the cage facility (laboratory) managing the monkeys invested in the study. Currently, the National Primate Center in Ochang, Chungcheongbuk-do has a total of 16 cages for research, but considering that six monkeys are required to conduct an experiment, it is a structure in which only two studies and experiments can be conducted simultaneously at the current installation scale. . This year, the number of test requests from private pharmaceutical companies, etc., who are interested in developing a corona vaccine, is increasing significantly, but only a few studies are being done due to a lack of cages.

A doctoral researcher in the process of developing a corona vaccine “There are problems with the entire facility, such as the primate cages, but the most serious thing is that there is only one doctoral researcher at the Center for Biotechnology Research who can conduct experiments with primates directly.”“The primate experiment is an essential procedure for the development of a vaccine and treatment for Corona 19, and is a key element that will determine the success or failure of the development, so urgent support is desperate.”

President Moon Jae-in attended the joint industry-academic-research-disease conference on developing a vaccine for the treatment of COVID-19 held at the Institut Pasteur Korea in Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do on April 9. [청와대사진기자단]

Reporter Jeong Jin-woo [email protected]