MOSCOW, August 15. /TASS/. Foreigners demonstrate interest to Russian developments, such as COVID vaccines and medicines, and are trying to replicate them, head of Russia’s Federal Medical Biological Agency Veronika Skvortsova said on Monday.
"Foreigners are very interested [in development] and are trying to replicate, with a certain delay, the state-of-the-art medicines we have already invented. <…> It happened to our anti-viral medicine Mir-19, which dramatically reduces the viral load. Currently, the Australians, the Germans, the British are following our lead, but with a 18-24-month delay and their current publications are only about clinical tests. We registered it in December," she said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
According to Skvortsova, the agency is "rather import forestalling than import substituting." "We create our technologies according to our know-how, but rely on what is already known in the world as a basic zero platform. It helped us to create several technological platforms. First of all, it is the Convacell recombinant protein vaccine and a new platform - a polysaccharide conjugated vaccine, which can help us substitute for expensive American vaccines. Moreover, Russian vaccines will be more targeted, will fit better the serotypes typical of Russia. The agency has all types of vaccines, we are working on both dead vaccines, subunit inactivated, and victor vaccines," she noted.
She also said that the agency plans to sign an agreement with the Russian Direct Investment Fund on the sidelines of the Army-2022 forum to "enhance the export potential of these pioneer products."