Request for Proposal (RFP) - Production Economics Assessment of Vaccine Microarray Patches at Gavi The Vaccine Alliance

Gavi The Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership that helps vaccinate half the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases. The Vaccine Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners.

Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has helped immunise a whole generation – over 822 million children – and prevented more than 14 million deaths, helping to halve child mortality in 73 developing countries. Gavi also plays a key role in improving global health security by supporting health systems as well as funding global stockpiles for Ebola, cholera, meningitis and yellow fever vaccines.

Applications are invited for:

Title: Request for Proposal (RFP) - Production Economics Assessment of Vaccine Microarray Patches

Reference No: 049-2022-GAVI-RFP

Preamble
In the 2016-2020 Supply and Procurement Strategy, the Alliance upheld innovation as one of three priorities in shaping markets to the benefit of the countries that Gavi supports, aiming to pursue a common agenda on driving product innovation to better meet country needs and support Alliance goals on immunisation coverage and equity. The Vaccine Innovation Prioritisation Strategy (VIPS) was formed in 2017 by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and is a partnership between Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), UNICEF, and PATH.

Between 2018 and 2020, VIPS has represented an unprecedented collaboration amongst the aforementioned organisations, involving in-depth research, stakeholder consultations, and development and application of a framework capable of evaluating twenty-four technologies at different stages along the product development-to-uptake continuum. This work required consultation with country level stakeholders to evaluate the potential programmatic, health,and financial impact of vaccine-product innovations; developing common principles across the Alliance to measure the long-term benefits of these candidates; and convening a platform to articulate a clear and aligned perspective on how priority product innovations could address the programmatic needs of countries.

By prioritising innovations in vaccine products and communicating these priorities, the goal of VIPS is to provide greater clarity on lower- and middle-income country (LMIC) needs to manufacturers and partners to inform and influence investment decisions. In 2020, the outcome of the comprehensive VIPS prioritisation exercise was the shortlisting of the following three innovations:

• Microarray patches (MAPs)
• Heat stable and Controlled Temperature Chain (CTC) qualified vaccines
• Barcodes on primary packaging.

Vaccine Microarray Patches (MAPs) were ranked as the highest priority of the three innovations VIPS prioritised; they were considered to be truly ‘transformational’ innovations that have the potential to address many of the immunisation barriers identified by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) through the VIPS process. They are also highly relevant for COVID-19 vaccine implementation and for pandemic preparedness and response in general.

As a next step, the VIPS partners have defined an end-to-end integrated strategy across immunisation partners for vaccine MAPs (from product development to country uptake), including developing a five-year action plan, to accelerate their advancement for use in LMICs. The development of this strategy included consultations with MAP developers (MDs), vaccine manufacturers (VMs) and other immunisation and implementation partners.

The Alliance’s long-term vision for vaccine MAPs is to: Implement MAP products for priority vaccines to overcome immunisation barriers to ensure equitable access to, and improved effectiveness of, vaccines in LMICs and contribute to global health security.

Wide-spread implementation of vaccine MAPs will not be achieved within the five-year timeframe of the VIPS Action Plan, therefore the five-year goal of the VIPS Action Plan is to: Accelerate development and lay the foundation for future country uptake of MAPs as a platform technology for vaccine delivery in LMICs.

Purpose of the Project
The VIPS Alliance would like to understand the potential costs of goods of a vaccine MAP based on production economics for a specific vaccine in the Gavi portfolio (further details on the vaccine will be disclosed to the selected bidder) as well as for MAPs generally in comparison with other vaccine delivery formats.

Given the stage of development and commercialization of vaccine MAPs, several key parameters which may impact product costs are unknown. A Production Economics assessment of vaccine MAPs will investigate key cost drivers, such as product characteristics, supply of vaccine MAP products, and manufacturing scenarios.

• This project will allow for the estimation of overall cost of goods based on different variables for MAPs generally and for a specific vaccine-MAP.

Overall Objective

• Perform PE assessments of MAPs for a specific vaccine in the Gavi portfolio as well as for MAPs generally (of different formats) in comparison to conventional vaccine packaging presentations.
• These assessments may be supported based on institutional knowledge from previous COGs assessments performed by experts on delivery technologies, MAPs and vaccines, public sources, the MAPs expertise of VIPS Alliance members, and possibly MAP developers’ inputs if they agree to collaborate.

Key Tasks
Part 1- Vaccine specific MAP assessment:

• Understand project needs and define the parameters to be included in the Production Economics assessment through discussions with Gavi and VIPS working group for the vaccine-specific MAPs including product characteristics, formats, manufacturing process characteristics and production scenarios.
• Conduct consultations with knowledge holders in MAP development to gather information or validate assumptions to be used in the development of the PE models. This may include information from developers of MAPs, vaccines, or other groups with expertise in the development of these products.
• Perform PE modelling
• Collect information to support bottom-up cost estimation and modelling, potentially combining bottom-up cost estimation with information sourced from developers will be required to inform the models
• Develop a baseline process model based on the identified parameters and considerations for the specified vaccine.
• Develop a process model to assess bulk vaccine production.
• Develop a consolidated process model to understand the potential cost of the vaccine MAP.
• Develop a consolidated toggle model (dynamic interface) which allows users to explore the impact of different variations in key parameters that influence production economics, as determined via discussions with Gavi.
• Develop a presentation which summarizes the assumptions, inputs and results of the analysis.
• Implement recommendations or refinements to the assessment as requested by the reviewers.

Part 2- General MAP assessment:

• Understand project needs and define the parameters to be included in the PE assessment through discussions with Gavi and VIPS working group for vaccine MAPs generally including product formats, ranges in product characteristics, manufacturing process characteristics and production scenarios.
• Conduct consultations with knowledge holders in MAP development to gather information or validate assumptions to be used in the development of the PE models. This may include information from developers of MAPs, vaccines, or other groups with expertise in the development of these products.
• Perform Production Economics modelling
• Develop process models for at least two MAP formats
• Develop a consolidated toggle model (dynamic interface)which allows users to explore the impact of different variations in key parameters that influence production economics, as determined via discussions with Gavi.
• Develop a presentation which summarizes the assumptions, inputs and results of the analysis.
• Implement recommendations or refinements to the assessment as requested by the reviewers.

Qualifying Criteria

• Bidders must provide a copy of their Corporate Social Responsibility Policy or documentation to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability, diversity, inclusion and the environment.
• Bidders must provide the past 3 (three) year Financial Statements: namely: Auditor’s page, Income/P&L, Balance Sheet & Cash Flow
• Bidders must be able to provide at least 3 reference contacts within their proposal

Application Closing Date
8th April, 2022.

Submission of Documents
Bidders must submit a copy of their Proposal to Gavi by email to: procurement@gavi.org

Note

• The subject heading of the email shall be "049-2022-GAVI-RFP - Technical Proposal - [Bidder Name]" and "049-2022-GAVI-RFP – Financial Proposal - [Bidder Name]".
• Bidders may submit multiple emails (suitably annotated - e.g. Email 1 of 3) if the attached files are too large to suit a single email transmission.
• Please ensure that the different Proposal elements are returned in either MS Office Format or PDF.

Click Here (MS WORD) for a detailed description of the RFP.