RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Dammam Biotech Valley is currently going through clinical trials to manufacture its first vaccines in the Kingdom, CEO Abdulrahman Alolayan told Arab News.
He hopes the trials will end next year after which it will be presented to the Saudi Food and Drug Authority for further approval.
Alolayan, who is also an academic at King Saud University, said the company is seeking international partnerships to manufacture the vaccine.
“We are talking to a number of international partners from Switzerland, India and the UK. Once we finalize it, we will make it public,” he said on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative summit held in Riyadh this week. The CEO said the company is simultaneously working on different fronts such as incubating ideas, conducting research and investing in startups and other projects.
Saudi Arabia’s Dammam Biotech Valley is planning to be a hub in health and biotechnology innovation, the CEO said.
Highlighting the importance of biotechnology, Alolayan said the field is fast developing and new technologies in biotech will help transform other industries such as health care, food and agriculture.
He said the Kingdom is working hard to develop and localize the biotechnology industry as part of the Vision 2030, as is evident from the views of the Saudi investment minister expressed at the FII.
Biotech involves technology that uses biological systems and living organisms such as molecules to develop new products. This is a field where science meets commerce, as breakthrough medicines, biofuels, GM plants and so on are usually conceived in a university or hospital lab and then taken to the market by private companies — a process that can take up to a decade.