A Chilean tree holds hope for new vaccines

By Aislinn Laing and Allison Martell

CASABLANCA, Chile (Reuters) -Down a dusty farm track in Chilean wine country, behind a wooden gate wrapped in chains, forestry experts are nursing a plantation of saplings whose bark holds the promise of potent vaccines.

Quillay trees, technically known as Quillaja saponaria, are rare evergreens native to Chile that have long been used by the indigenous Mapuche people to make soap and medicine. In recent years, they have also been used to make a highly successful vaccine against shingles and the world’s first malaria vaccine, as well as foaming agents for products in the food, beverage and mining industries.

Now two saponin molecules, made from the bark of branches pruned from older trees in Chile’s forests, are being used for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by drugmaker Novavax (NASDAQ:) Inc. The chemicals are used to make adjuvant, a substance that boosts the immune system.

Over the next two years, Maryland-based Novavax plans to produce billions of doses of the vaccine, mostly for low- and middle-income countries, which would make it one of the largest COVID-19 vaccine suppliers in the world.

With no reliable data on how many healthy quillay trees are left in Chile, experts and industry officials are divided on how quickly the supply of older trees will be depleted by rising demand. But nearly everyone agrees that industries relying on quillay extracts will at some point need to switch to plantation-grown trees or a lab-grown alternative.

A Reuters analysis of export data from trade data provider ImportGenius shows that the supply of older trees is under increasing pressure. Exports of quillay products more than tripled to more than 3,600 tonnes per year in the decade before the pandemic.

Ricardo San Martin, who developed the pruning and extraction process that created the modern quillay industry, said producers must immediately work toward making quillay products from younger, plantation-grown trees.

“My estimate four years ago was that we were heading towards the sustainability limit,” he said.

San Martin said he has toiled through the COVID-19 pandemic in the basement of his oceanfront cabin in Sea Ranch, California, to refine a process that could help produce saponins from leaves and twigs in order to maximize the yield.

“I am working as though this needs to be done yesterday,” said San Martin, who is also sponsoring a project in which drones would count quillay trees in remote and hard-to-access forests, to determine how many are left.

Quillay producers and their customers say the harvest can continue for now without decimating the supply of older trees.

“We continue to monitor the situation in Chile, in close collaboration with our supplier, but at this time we are confident in our supply,” Novavax said in a statement to…