Advancing product development and use of monoclonal antibodies for infectious disease in low and middle income countries (LMICs)

Identification and development of mechanisms to accelerate development of and increase access to infectious disease mAbs for LMICs in particular to address the production costs of these products to address affordability; leverage learning from these activities to apply to and accelerate other mAbs in the pipeline.

WHO has a unique role to play here in being able to bring together all partners from early R&D researchers, to biotech companies, funding agencies, regulatory agencies to country representatives.

The Product and Delivery Research (PDR) unit in IVB aims to better identify and respond to the research priorities/needs of immunization programmes in LMICs, to inform the global R&D agenda and to strategically advance these.

This is achieved through evidence collation/generation/assessment for priority products, technologies and delivery strategies to optimise the impact of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.