Deals, Development and Manufacturing

SK bioscience will manufacture the vaccine antigen component for use in the final drug product at its vaccine facility in Andong L-house, South Korea.

The companies will work to establish an operational footprint across North America and Europe that will offer customers supply chain assurance for a combined portfolio of leading solutions.

The company will use the acquisition to further its drug development pipeline in women’s healthcare.

The CDMO will offer capacity for manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics at its Grand Rapids, MI, fill/finish facility.

The companies will collaborate on the manufacturing, clinical development, and regulatory activities for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine in Japan.

The companies have agreements to supply its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to Japan and Canada, pending regulatory approvals in those countries.

The company is working to ensure broad global access to its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, following approval from regulators.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline have been selected to supply the US government and the European Union with millions of doses of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

PPD announced it will provide drug development services to advance Pfizer’s portfolio.

Vico Therapeutics has raised $31 million (€27 million) in a Series A financing round, which the company will use to further advance its Antisense OligoNucleotides lead platform.

The companies will combine Intravacc’s OMV delivery platform with S-proteins with Celonic’s CHOvolution mammalian cell expression system to produce B and T-cell responses against SARS-CoV-2.

The acquisition gives LGM access to Nexgen’s manufacturing and warehouse distribution facilities and a pilot plant.

Avacta Group has expanded its partnership with Daewoong Pharmaceutical to include Affimer molecules that target viruses, such as coronavirus.

The companies will utilize Avid’s upstream and downstream process development and drug substance manufacturing services in conjunction with Argonaut’s parenteral drug product fill-finish services for the delivery of CGMP parenteral drug products for use in clinical studies.

Sangamo will receive a $75 million upfront license fee payment and will be eligible to earn up to $720 million in other development and commercial milestone payments, including up to $420 million in development milestones and up to $300 million in commercial milestones.

The transaction is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2020.

Sterling Pharma Solutions has signed a deal with Moleculin Biotech to support the development of WP1122, a potential COVID-19 treatment.

DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences has entered into a research collaboration in microbiome science with the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University.

The UK government is committing a further £100 million (US $127 million) to ensure that there is capability to manufacture a successful COVID-19 vaccine at scale in the UK.

Stevanato Group and Colanar have signed an agreement for lab scale fill/finish capabilities to study container closure systems at Stevanato Group’s US TEC in Boston, MA.

Pending approval of the Pfizer and BioNTech mRNA-based vaccine candidate against SARS-COV-2, the companies will supply the US government with an initial 100 million doses.

Catalent has unveiled investment plans to create a European center of excellence for clinical biologics formulation development and drug product fill/finish services.

The project will focus on providing a faster route to clinical studies for AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, AZD1222.

Innovate UK has awarded Epsilogen with further grant funding for the development of the next generation antibody treatments for ovarian cancer.

The UK government has secured early access to 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from the BioNTech/Pfizer alliance and Valneva.