Govt approves export of Serum Institute BCG vaccine to Canada
The product is for intravesical instillation and is available from the Serum Institute in 40 mg and 80 mg presentations, the sources said.
New Delhi: The government has approved the export of BCG vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India to Canada for immunotherapy to treat bladder cancer, official sources said on Monday.
The permission was granted after Prakash Kumar Singh, director, Serum Institute, wrote to the Drugs Controller of India (DCGI) seeking approval to export BCG for immunotherapy to Canada, they said.
BCG as immunotherapy is a live freeze-dried preparation derived from attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis (Bacillus Calmette Guerin).
The product is for intravesical instillation and is available from the Serum Institute in 40 mg and 80 mg presentations, the sources said.
As part of the therapy, the vaccine is administered into the bladder through a catheter where it stays in the lining of the bladder for a specific duration affecting the cells and fighting cancer without impacting other body parts.
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Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that MenFive, the first conjugate vaccine to protect against the five predominant causes of meningococcal meningitis in Africa, had been prequalified by the World Health Organization (WHO). Developed through a 13-year collaboration between Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. (SIIPL) and PATH, with crucial funding from the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, MenFive protects against meningococcal serogroups A, C, W, Y, and X and is designed to eliminate annual meningitis outbreaks and epidemics in the African meningitis belt—a string of 26 countries from Senegal and The Gambia in the west to Ethiopia in the east.
Serum Institute of India is an Indian biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals company headquartered in Pune, India. The company was founded by Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla in 1966 and is a part of Cyrus Poonawalla Group.
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