A unit of a Japanese company backed by Philip Morris International is planning to launch the world’s first plant-based Covid-19 vaccine that is potentially cheaper and easier to transport and store than conventional jabs.
Toshifumi Tada, head of vaccine business development at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, said that its subsidiary Medicago would apply for Canadian approval for its vaccine candidate that is made from a plant from the tobacco family by the end of this year.
The Osaka-based pharmaceutical group expects global demand for coronavirus vaccines to remain strong as new strains of the virus continue to emerge, giving it an opportunity to break into a market that has been dominated by frontrunners such as Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.