Published by Focus Malaysia, image from Focus Malaysia.
Biological threats such as Covid-19 can cripple the economy and endanger public health, making it a formidable leverage to bend the will of any nation’s leadership.
In the case of biological warfare, where more infectious and lethal strains could be used, Malaysia’s situation is akin to being held at gun point.
However, the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) and Health Ministry (MOH) are on the right track in developing a national roadmap on vaccine development, which includes a proposed National Vaccine Centre under the 12th Malaysia Plan.
In this effort, it should be acknowledged that the key component for drug discovery and vaccine development is a core competency in biotechnology.
Introduced back in 2005, the National Biotechnology Policy (NBP) is now in the third and final phase (2016-2020) with a ‘global business’ aspiration. The NBP include, amongst others, thrusts in healthcare and industrial biotechnology development to promote advanced bio-processing and biomanufacturing technologies.
Yet, after 15 years, we have a situation where Malaysia does not have the internal capability to develop the vaccine, as indicated by Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah in April.
According to CodeBlue, MOSTI minister Khairy Jamaluddin provided context to the local vaccine situation as being attributed to ‘lack of facilities, a focus on animal vaccine and the early stage of Covid-19 vaccine research in Malaysia’.
In addition to the questionable status and outcome of the NBP, it may have also been a strategic mistake to not include vaccine development as a specific thrust or a special project under the NBP.
Thus, it is crucial that the relevant successes and failures of the NBP are studied to ensure the development and implementation of the national vaccine roadmap in order to avoid similar pitfalls.
Poor techno-economic assessment and monitoring, unrealistic projections and mere lip service by bureaucrats and politicians on potential job creation as well as socio-economic and healthcare benefits should be secondary to ensure proper and sustainable implementation.
Understandably, a single vaccine development from lab to commercialisation can take a long time and cost between hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, with very low success rates.
Therefore, it is important to note the monumental financial, intellectual and political resilience needed to embark on successful journeys toward local vaccine research, development and production capabilities.
Taking the reality of Malaysia’s current capabilities, for the near term, it’s worth considering partnerships with inter-dependent economies to collectively share knowledge and the financial burdens.
It can also reduce reliance from superpowers and pave the way for Malaysia and other participating countries to increase internal standalone capabilities for the long run.
History has also shown that political instability and/or a change of government can derail national initiatives.
A national vaccine development programme can easily outlive the uncertain lifespan of political regimes.
In light of Malaysia’s political drama, lawmakers are strongly advised to keep their troublesome politicking out of matters of national security.
CodeBlue also reported that the roadmap will coordinate work integration between the government and scientists, medical practitioners and industry players. This is in line with the spirit of ‘Unity Alliance’ under the people-centric and technology-enabled Malaysia 5.0 vision.
Such coordination is a significant task, and would require digital transformation to integrate and gather big data from all parties.
The flood of information may be fed to a central artificial intelligence (AI) for mutual review, analyses and predictive tasks (predicting bio-chemical reactions, protein structures, etc.) and fed back to researchers for further action.
According to author Lock Lyon, AI can support analysis of data from existing vaccines and through machine-learning developed using these data, potential candidate molecules may be predicted.
Progressing from lab and animal testing, AI can be used to analyse data from human clinical trials with additional real-time data gathered through the use of 4IR technologies such as smart interoperable sensors and wearable technologies.
This cyclical process, with data contributions from many parties co-analysed by AI, has the potential to reduce operational costs and self-improvement, which can expedite research work substantially.
This is relevant as new vaccines will have to continuously be developed, considering the case of Covid-19 and other viruses, to keep up with the mutation rate of the virus. Not to mention future crises by a totally different type of biological threat.
As Malaysia rolls out national vaccination programmes, AI can also be used to analyse the gathered scientific, medical, demographical and statistical data for pattern recognition, trend projections and forecasts.
Lyon referenced a good example of where 4IR technologies (such as AI), digital transformation and biotechnology work hand-in-hand, enabling the sharing of data on molecule design for pharmaceutical companies.
Perhaps this would be one way to revive Malaysia’s biotechnology aspirations, aligning with the holistic adoption of 4IR technologies and digital transformation.
In preparation for future pandemics and/or conflicts, MOSTI and MOH should consider a cooperation with the Ministry of Defense (Mindef), through the bio-surveillance and biological defense branch of Mindef’s Science & Technology Research Institute for Defense (STRIDE) on joint-collaborations to support the roadmap and/or integrate with the proposed National Vaccine Centre.
This allows for higher levels of coordination to be developed and resources to be shared early on. Biological defense elements could also be developed alongside vaccine development such as nationwide strategies and protocols, personal protective gears, sanitisation/sterilisation and containment technologies, digital detection and tracing, testing kits and many more.
Ameen Kamal is the Head of Science & Technology at EMIR Research, an independent think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.
