Serum Institute of India

Serum Institute of India (SII) is an Indian biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals company, based in Pune. It is the world's largest manufacturer of vaccines. It was founded by Cyrus Poonawalla in 1966 and is a part of Cyrus Poonawalla Group. The Serum Institute of India was founded in 1966 in the city of Pune, India. The company set out to produce immunobiological's, which were imported into India at high prices. Among the first products the Serum Institute of India manufactured in large quantities were the tetanus antitoxin, snake antivenom, DPT vaccine, and MMR vaccine. The company's product lines was expanded to include different types of vaccines against bacterial or virus infections, combination vaccines, influenza vaccine, and meningococcal vaccine. Besides vaccine the company also manufactures antisera, blood plasma, and hormone products. As of 2014 the vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India have been used in international vaccination programmes run by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Today the Serum Institute of India is run by the Poonawalla Group and engages in research, development, and manufacturing. In 2009 the company began developing an intranasal swine flu vaccine. In 2012, the company's first international acquisition was Bilthoven Biologicals, a biopharmaceutical company in Netherlands. In 2016, with support from US-based Mass Biologics of University of Massachusetts Medical School, the Serum Institute of India invented a fast-acting anti-rabies agent, Rabies Human Monoclonal Antibody (RMAb), also known as Rabishield. the company is the world's largest vaccine producer by number of doses produced, manufacturing around 1.5 billion doses of vaccines each year. The products developed include tuberculosis vaccine Tubervac (BCG), Poliovac for poliomyelitis, and other vaccinations for the childhood vaccination schedule. The company has partnered with the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which is developing AZD1222 (Covishield) in partnership with the University of Oxford.