Vaccines

Symbiosis Pharmaceutical Services has signed a supply agreement with AstraZeneca for the sterile manufacture of AZD1222, a COVID-19 recombinant adenovirus vaccine, to be used in clinical trials.

Inovio received a $71-million contract from the US Department of Defense to scale up manufacture of its Cellectra smart device to deliver its DNA vaccine.

The companies are expanding their existing collaboration and license agreement to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases.

The company will invest EUR 610 million (USD$682 million) into a new vaccine production site and research center in France.

Valneva will manufacture the Sabin vaccine strains for clinical trials in its manufacturing facility in Solna, Sweden, using Batavia’s process.

Catalent will provide vial filling and packaging capacity to AstraZeneca at its manufacturing facility in Anagni, Italy, for the large-scale commercial manufacturing of the University of Oxford’s adenovirus vector-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Oxford Biomedica, has signed a collaboration agreement with the not-for-profit organization, the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, to provide the UK with its first strategic vaccine development and advanced manufacturing capability.

The candidates will be used by the Vaccine Research Center, part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

Catalent will use its GPEx cell line development technology to create a cell line expressing the recombinant VLP at its Madison, WI facility.

Novavax announces DoD contract to produce 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The European Commission is pledging EUR 300 million (US$339 million) to Gavi for vaccines for infectious diseases, in addition to an earlier pledge of more than EUR 1.5 billion (US$1.7 billion) made on May 4, 2020.

The new vaccine would be made with a Newcastle disease virus vector that expresses the immunogenic spike protein of SARS-CoV-2

The Gavi advance market commitment for COVID-19 vaccines is a new financing instrument aimed at incentivizing vaccine manufacturers to produce sufficient and affordable quantities of COVID-19 vaccines.

Despite the clear danger of COVID-19 to global health, vaccine opponents have gained ground, as fearful populations lose faith in the capabilities of industry and government to protect public health.

The acquisition gives Novovax an annual operating capacity of more that one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine antigen.

The company announced that it has been issued a task order under a present contract with BARDA to use its contract development and manufacturing capabilities and knowledge to assist in the US government’s efforts to deliver COVID-19 vaccines.

Merck will use Themis’s vector platform to develop a vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

Merck will acquire Themis Bioscience and collaborate with IAVI and Ridgeback Bio on COVID-19 vaccines and therapies.

CordenPharma and Moderna extended a strategic manufacturing services agreement for the supply of lipid excipients to be used in Moderna’s vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.

Advent manufactured the vaccine doses for the Phase 2/3 clinical trial.

The White House looks to bring in credible experts for its Operation Warp Speed initiative to advance therapies and vaccines to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The company announced that participants have enrolled in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, NVX‑CoV2373, a prefusion protein made using Novavax’s proprietary nanoparticle technology.

Funding from the US government could lead to 300 million coronavirus vaccine doses by October 2020.

CanSinoBIO will license-in Precision NanoSystems' proprietary RNA vaccine platform technology while the latter leads the development of the RNA vaccine formulation.

Participants in two dosing cohorts in Moderna’s mRNA-1273 study reached or exceeded neutralizing antibody titers generally seen in convalescent sera.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations will invest up to $384 million of additional funding, in addition to the $4 million it invested in March, to advance the clinical development of NVX-CoV2373, Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Will moving at “warp speed” to develop a vaccine impact efficacy or safety?

Equipment and process optimization must be considered for scaling up these developmental technologies to commercial production.

The goal of the collaboration is to manufacture up to one billion does per year of mRNA-1273, Moderna’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have announced that they will collaborate on the global development and distribution of the university’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection.