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A Houston-born COVID-19 vaccine has gotten the go-ahead to be produced and distributed in Indonesia.

PT Bio Farma, which oversees government-owned pharmaceutical producers in Indonesia, says it’s ready to make 20 million doses of the IndoVac COVID-19 vaccine this yr and 100 million doses a yr by 2024. This comes after the vaccine obtained authorization from the Indonesian Meals and Drug Authority for emergency use in adults.

With greater than 275 million residents, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation.

IndoVac was created by the Texas Youngsters’s Hospital Middle for Vaccine Growth and Baylor Faculty of Drugs. Drs. Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi lead the vaccine venture. Bio Farma is licensing IndoVac from BCM Ventures, the business group on the Baylor Faculty of Drugs.

“Access to vaccines in the developing world is critical to the eradication of this virus,” Hotez, co-director of the Texas Youngsters’s Hospital Middle for Vaccine Growth and dean of the Nationwide Faculty of Tropical Drugs at Baylor Faculty of Drugs, says in a news release.

Except for distributing the vaccine in Indonesia, Bio Farma plans to introduce it to numerous worldwide markets.

“The need for a safe, effective, low-cost vaccine for middle- to low-income countries is central to the world’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Bottazzi, co-director of the Texas Youngsters’s Hospital Middle for Vaccine Growth and affiliate dean of the Nationwide Faculty of Tropical Drugs at Baylor.

“Without widespread inoculation of populations in the developing world, which must include safe, effective booster doses, additional [COVID-19] variants will develop, hindering the progress achieved by currently available vaccines in the United States and other Western countries.”

Bio Farma says it has accomplished Section 1 and Section 2 medical trials for IndoVac and is wrapping up a Section 3 trial.

IndoVac is a model of the patent-free, low-cost Corbevax vaccine, developed in Houston and dubbed “The World’s COVID-19 Vaccine.” The vaccine formulation could be licensed by a vaccine producer in any low- or middle-income nation, which then can take possession of it, produce it, identify it, and work with authorities officers to distribute it, Hotez told The Texas Tribune in February.

Amongst donors which have pitched in cash for improvement of the vaccine are the Houston-based MD Anderson and John S. Dunn foundations, the San Antonio-based Kleberg Basis, and Austin-based Tito’s Vodka.

“During 2022, we hope to partner with the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies to vaccinate the world. We believe that global vaccine equity is finally at hand and that it is the only thing that can bring the COVID pandemic to an end,” Hotez and Bottazzi wrote in a December 2021 article for Scientific American.