The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced new investments to help advance access to mRNA research and vaccine manufacturing technology to support low- and middle-income countries’ (LMICs) capacity to develop vaccines at scale.

mRNA technology is being leveraged for a range of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, and Lassa fever, and has the potential to significantly lower the costs of mRNA research and manufacturing and enable expanded access.

The foundation is investing $40 million in funding to advance access to Quantoom Biosciences’ low-cost, mRNA research and manufacturing platform, which was developed with an early-research Grand Challenges grant made to its parent company, Univercells. The Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) and Biovac, research institutes with vaccine manufacturing experience based in Senegal and South Africa, respectively, will receive $5 million each to acquire the technology to use it to develop locally relevant vaccines. The foundation also will provide $20 million to Quantoom Biosciences, to help LMICs benefit from next-generation mRNA health tools. The Gates Foundation will grant another $10 million to other LMIC vaccine manufacturers yet to be named.

Quantoom’s modular mRNA technology aims to address common bottlenecks in current mRNA research and manufacturing technologies to make it simpler and less expensive to use. It could also  reduce the need for extensively trained experts, which continues to be a barrier to vaccine production in Africa and elsewhere.

The additional funding for Quantoom builds on an initial grant made in 2016 to Univercells in response to a Grand Challenges call for new interventions for vaccine manufacturing. The Univercells proposal focused on developing modular engineering principles that would facilitate decentralized, small-footprint manufacturing of vaccines.

IPD plans to start manufacturing measles and rubella vaccines using Univercells’ original vaccine manufacturing technology, expanding the region’s capacity to deliver routine immunization campaigns.

“Innovation can be transformative, but only if it reaches the people who need it most,” said Morena Makhoana, CEO of Biovac. “This collaboration will help close critical gaps in access to promising mRNA vaccines against diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest. It will also assist us in our mission to establish end-to-end vaccine manufacturing capability at scale in Africa for global supply.”