Overcoming monkey shortages would be key to new Covid vaccines

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<strong>Scientists all over the world are facing a desperate shortage of monkeys as they are a crucial requirement for developing more potent Covid-19 vaccines which are likely to be needed in the future. The hunt for primates is becoming all the more urgent as epidemiologists, virologists, and infectious disease specialists anticipate that new mutations of the coronavirus, which are more aggressive, could render current vaccines useless within a year.</strong></p>
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Last month, the China Association for Science and Technology, in its meeting in Beijing discussed the problem of the missing monkeys in detail.</p>
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“The speedy development of coronavirus vaccines benefited from the progress in growing China’s lab animal stock but we cannot deny there are still many aspects in this field that depend on external parties,” Qin Chuan, the director of China’s Institute of Laboratory Animals Science (ILAS) was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post (SCMP).</p>
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Qin was referring to the lack of a sustainable and diverse stock of animals, especially monkeys, needed for laboratory tests in China.</p>
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<strong>Pharma giants in race against time </strong></p>
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China is not the only country that is facing a problem of lab animal shortages. Even pharmaceutical companies in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and other countries are hitting a similar bottleneck.</p>
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The Bioqual Inc., a US based company, has been responsible for providing lab monkeys to pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, to develop Covid-19 vaccines. But as the coronavirus swept across the US last year, there was a sudden shortage of specially bred monkeys that were required for experimentation.</p>
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Unable to find monkeys, which can cost more than $10,000 each, about a dozen companies were left scrambling to find research animals.</p>
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In February this year, the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR) tweeted: “The world needs monkeys, whose DNA closely resembles that of humans, to develop Covid-19 vaccines. But a global shortage, resulting from the unexpected demand caused by the pandemic, has been exacerbated by a recent ban on the sale of wildlife from China."</p>
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According to the New York Times, as new variants of the coronavirus threaten to make the current batch of vaccines obsolete, scientists are racing to find new sources of monkeys. The United States is also reassessing its reliance on China, a rival with its own biotech ambitions.</p>
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<strong>The China factor</strong></p>
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In the past, China used to be a major lab monkey exporter to the US, which uses more of the animal than any other country. In fiscal year 2019, labs in the US used some 68,000 non-human primates and a total of about 800,000 animals for research, according to the US Department of Agriculture. “The use of monkeys for research is controversial, but their physiological similarities to humans – especially their pulmonary and immune systems – have made them invaluable for studying lung diseases and vaccines,” says the department.</p>
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The primates share more than 90% of our DNA, and their similar biology means they can be tested with nasal swabs and have their lungs scanned. Scientists say it is almost impossible to find a substitute to test Covid-19 vaccines although drugs such as dexamethasone, the steroid that was used to treat former President Donald Trump, have been tested in hamsters</p>
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China also says that it is facing the same acute shortage of lab monkeys due to an import ban and rising demand from domestic researchers, leaving scientists desperately looking for affordable animals to carry on their studies.</p>
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The root cause of the primate shortages was apparently Beijing’s ban on overseas wildlife trade, which was imposed in January 2020 as part of a sweeping crackdown on the wildlife business. Under the ban, the import and export of lab monkeys also stopped, state media reported. However, the prohibition decimated China’s own lab monkey supply, since most primate species suitable for research, such as the cynomolgus macaque, are native to Southeast Asia. The dwindling supply of lab monkeys has pushed their prices in China up fourfold in two years from $2,300 to $9,200.</p>
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<strong>The Monkey advantage</strong></p>
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Despite the hunt for substitutes, the animal research, especially that involving primates seem to have unparalleled advantages. Monkeys can be challenged—that is, deliberately infected with Covid-19 after being given an experimental vaccine. Researchers can then follow the animals’ exact progression of disease or lack thereof, tracking how quickly antibody levels shoot up, and how long does the monkey take to shed the virus. These details are harder to get in human trials because people are naturally exposed to Covid-19 and aren’t being monitored every day.</p>
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Unsurprisingly, the US and China are now fiercely competing with each other to find monkeys in Asian, African and Southeast Asia countries, where these primates are found in larger numbers. Also, negotiations have begun with Brazil, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to begin monkey breeding.</p>
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India was the world's largest supplier of the rhesus macaques (monkey), locally known as bandar or langur. The US once relied on India to supply rhesus macaques which are common in India. But in 1978, India halted its exports following the reports that the monkeys were being used in military weapons testing.</p>
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