CAIRO, EGYPT; BERLIN, GERMANY; AND NEW YORK, NY — October 10, 2025 — Leads & Copy — IAVI, Minapharm, and ProBioGen have announced a strategic partnership to advance the end-to-end development and manufacturing of priority vaccines and biologics in Africa. The partnership aims to strengthen innovation and expand local manufacturing capacities to address the region’s health challenges, as only one percent of vaccines serving the African market are produced on the continent.
The collaboration combines Minapharm’s expertise in manufacturing and commercializing biologics in Africa, ProBioGen’s vaccine vector, avian cell line, and manufacturing technologies, and IAVI’s product development expertise. The partners will accelerate the development of ProBioGen’s Modified Vaccinia Ankara vaccine against Mpox, optimized for manufacturing productivity, immunogenicity, and ease of delivery.
Building on Minapharm’s mAb production capabilities and IAVI’s history of partnership, the three organizations will expand the existing regional manufacturing hub for affordable mAbs. The partnership relies on IAVI’s collaboration with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wellcome Trust. This initiative will enable technology transfer of IAVI’s portfolio of antibody-based products for HIV prevention, capacity-strengthening, market-shaping efforts, and future collaborations to expand access to a broader range of monoclonal and multispecific antibodies.
According to Mark Feinberg, M.D., Ph.D., IAVI’s President and CEO, this partnership represents a transformative opportunity to accelerate the development of innovations to address diseases with a disproportionate impact in Africa. Dr. Shaheer Bardissi, Ph.D., Co-CEO of Minapharm Pharmaceuticals, stated that the partnership creates an intercontinental scientific platform to scale innovation and ensure equitable access to innovative therapies and vaccines for Africa.
Dr. Volker Sandig, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at ProBioGen, expressed pride in contributing expertise and technologies to the alliance. H.E. Dr. Jean Kaseya, Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), affirmed Africa CDC’s readiness to support Member States in accessing these products through the African Pooled Procurement Mechanism (APPM).
Contact:
ProBioGen Press Contact: Sarah Wandrey, press@probiogen.de
Minapharm Media Contact: Christina Azmy, cazmy@minapharm.com, (+2) (02) 24143170
IAVI Media Contact: Heather Teixeira, HTeixeira@iavi.org
Source: IAVI
