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A plantation of young trees with bark that promises powerful vaccines is grown in a forest in Chile’s wine region.
On a dusty track and behind a wooden door wrapped in chains, forestry experts tend to quillay trees, known as quillaja saponaria, a rare evergreen tree native to the South American country that has long been used by the indigenous Mapuche people to make soap and medicine.
More recently, they have been used to make a highly effective shingles vaccine and the world’s first malaria vaccine.
Now, two molecules of saponin, made from the bark of pruned branches of older trees in the forests of Chile, are being used for a Covid-19 vaccine developed by US drug producer Novavax. The chemicals are used to make an adjuvant, a substance that strengthens the immune system.
Over the next two years, Novavax plans to produce billions of doses of vaccine, primarily for low- and middle-income countries, which would make it one of the largest suppliers of Covid-19 vaccines in the world.
With no reliable data on the number of healthy quillay trees remaining in Chile, experts and industry officials are divided over how quickly the supply of older trees will be depleted by growing demand. But almost everyone agrees that industries that rely on quillay extracts will at some point have to switch to plantation-grown trees or a lab-grown alternative.
Analysis of export data from trade data provider ImportGenius shows that the sourcing of older trees is under increasing pressure. Exports of quillay products more than tripled to over 3,600 tonnes per year in the decade leading up to the pandemic.
Ricardo San Martin, who developed the pruning and extraction process that created the modern quillay industry, said growers should immediately work on making quillay products from younger trees grown in plantation. .
“My estimate four years ago was that we were heading towards the limit of durability,” he said.
Mr San Martin said he worked hard during the pandemic in the basement of his oceanfront cabin in Sea Ranch, Calif., To refine a process that could help produce saponins from leaves and of twigs to maximize yield.
“I work as if this should be done yesterday,” said San Martin, who is also sponsoring a project in which drones will count quillay trees in remote and hard-to-reach forests to determine how many are left.
Quillay growers and their customers say harvest can continue for now without destroying the supply of older trees.
“We continue to monitor the situation in Chile, working closely with our supplier, but for the moment we are confident in our supply,” said Novavax. The company also said “life-saving vaccines will be a priority.”
The desert plant extract company Desert King International, which manages the Casablanca plantation, is Novavax’s sole supplier of quillay extracts and by far Chile’s largest quillay exporter.
Ready to do 4.4 billion doses
Company manager in Chile, Andres Gonzalez, said he is able to produce enough quillay extract from older trees to produce up to 4.4 billion doses of vaccine in 2022. With new supplies coming from private native forests, they have enough raw material to meet demand for the rest of this year and part of next year, he said.
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Mr Gonzalez said the company, where Mr San Martin is a consultant, has built a new production facility and has the capacity to supply other interested pharmaceutical companies – all without harming the forests. He acknowledged that “at some point these native forests will come to an end.”
“We want to start having very productive plantations and we are working on it,” he said.
A relatively small volume of quillay extract is needed to make vaccines – just under a milligram per dose – but supply is stretched by demand from other industries. Quillay products are also used as a natural additive in animal feed, as a biopesticide and as a pollution reduction agent in mining.
Quillay trees grow outside of Chile, but Chile is the only country where mature quillay is harvested from forests in large quantities.
Update: October 7, 2021, 6:31 a.m.
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