Zydus Lifesciences

Zydus Lifesciences is headquartered in Ahmedabad, India, and ranks 4th in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. The group has manufacturing sites and research facilities spread across five states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, and Sikkim in India and in the United States and Brazil.Its major areas of research include new chemical entity, biologics, and vaccines.

The company manufactures an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine (HQC). The drug is also thought to be a preventative medication for COVID-19. The United States government placed an order with the company in 2020 in order to help combat the spread of the virus throughout the country.

Zydus Lifesciences has reportedly fast-tracked research and development efforts into vaccine candidates for SARS-CoV-2. One of the candidates is based on a plasmid DNA platform, which is being developed by the firm's Vaccine Technology Centre in India. The research center previously developed India's first vaccine for the H1N1 "Swine Flu" epidemic n 2010.

Zydus Lifesciences's second SARS-CoV-2 candidate is based on an a live attenuated recombinant measles virus vectored vaccine against COVID-19. The recombinant measles virus (rMV) produced by reverse genetics would express codon-optimised proteins of the novel coronavirus and is meant induce long-term specific neutralizing antibodies, which will provide protection from the infection. The rMV vaccine candidate is being developed by Zydus Lifesciences's European research arm, Etna Biotech.